Strickland v. Medlen
Supreme Court of Texas, No. 12-0047 (April 5, 2013)Justice Willett (Opinion)
Quoting Byron and Huxley and invoking the memory of Old Yeller, the Supreme Court does its best to assuage the sensibilities of those who feel injustice in ignoring, for damages purposes, the loss of companionship inherent in the death of a family pet. But ultimately, hewing to its own century-old prior ruling and “the overwhelming weight of authority nationally,” the Court holds that recoverable damages in pet-death cases must be limited to loss of value—market value or “special value” to the owner based on “usefulness and services”—and cannot compensate for loss of companionship or other non-commercial considerations.
The Medlens’ family dog, Avery, escaped his backyard and was picked up by animal control. When the owners went to the shelter to pick Avery up, they didn’t have the money to pay the required fees. The shelter hung a “hold for owner” tag on Avery’s cage. But when the Medlens returned to bail Avery out, they discovered that, in a tragic mistake, Avery had been placed on the euthanasia list by Strickland, one of the shelter workers, and had been put down. The Medlens sued, seeking damages for Avery’s “intrinsic value,” representing the emotional loss of their relationship with Avery, not the dog’s market or pecuniary value.
The trial court dismissed, relying upon an 1891 decision of the Texas Supreme Court, Heiligmann v. Rose, which had limited recovery for the poisoning of three dogs to their “market value” or “some special or pecuniary value to the owner, that must be ascertained by reference to the usefulness and services of the dog.” The Fort Worth Court of Appeals reversed, observing that “Texas law has changed greatly since 1891,” and held that damages for the “special value” of a pet “may be derived from the attachment that an owner feels for his pet.” As might be expected, the case attracted significant attention from amici and from the media. In the end, the Supreme Court agreed with the trial court.
Key to the Court’s ultimate decision was its threshold finding that, although most people regard their dogs and cats as members of their families, a pet is “personal property” for purposes of tort law, albeit a “special form” of such property. The Court explained that loss of companionship, the gist of the Medlens’ claim, “is fundamentally a form of personal-injury damage, not property damage,” and in fact is narrowly reserved for loss of a parent, child, or spouse. It went on to note the anomaly that would arise if the plaintiffs’ damages theory were upheld: One could pursue damages for loss of companionship of one’s boxer, but not one’s brother; for one’s ferret, but not one’s friend. And so, the Court elected to maintain the line it had drawn over a hundred years ago in Heiligmann. In so doing, it was bolstered by amici such as the American Kennel Club and various animal rights and veterinary groups concerned about the negative “unintended consequences” such a damages claim might engender—including increased veterinary and insurance costs, the likely demise of free spaying and neutering clinics, and potential liability for animal-rescue workers, pet sitters, and even police officers and others who encounter loose and perhaps dangerous animals. Decisions about how to accommodate such concerns while crafting any remedy in pet-death cases is better left to legislation, the Court decided.
The principal obstacle to the Court’s analysis came in the form of another line of its decisions that had authorized recovery of damages for “heirloom” property, which has its “primary value in sentiment” and as to which a court may factor in “the feelings of the owner for such property.” As one group of amici colorfully explained, under the rule ultimately accepted by the Court, the Medlens might well have pursued damages based on sentimental attachment to a taxidermied Avery, but not to the flesh-and-blood Avery. Though the Court tried valiantly to distinguish between the attachment one may have for a family heirloom versus a family pet, the distinction seems elusive. In the end, it appeared that any concerns about incongruity of the pet-damages rule with the “heirloom exception” were simply overborn by the practical and policy concerns rightly acknowledged by the Court, and by the weight of authority—both its own prior case law and that of most jurisdictions across the country—supporting the pragmatic rule it ultimately acknowledged.
