Posted on 11/06/2023 2:18:06 PM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
An Oregon man’s dogged search for the truth has left him nearly $1.4 million richer.
Joshua Smith was forlorn when his feline sidekick, Frank, mysteriously disappeared.
But Smith sported a Cheshire cat smile this week after a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury deliberated less than two hours before awarding him $1.375 million for the loss of his 3-year-old tabby, oregonlive.com reported.
Smith had previously sued, claiming his landlord had “catnapped” the furball.
“The jury’s message should be loud and clear to landlords,” said purr-suasive attorney Michael Fuller, who won the case. “You need to respect the rights of tenants, especially when it comes to pets.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Back in the old days that was a lot of money.
This is wrong on both parties accout. Do not mess with others property but 1.4 million for a cat is a tavesty of justice.
Claims? The landlord did still the cat. Good to see justice served. Don’t mess with peoples pets.
Agreed, if in fact landlord’s guilt was proven, award of court costs plus $1,000 for tenant’s suffering, but any award over $2,000 appears ridiculous.
At the time it was. That is all that matters. Landlord is pure scum, now pays.
I wonder how much someone would get if their pet was executed along with a warrant.
Juries like to stick it to anyone in business. Being a landlord is being a businessman. Tenants get the idea that they should live for free. And juries of a lot more tenants than landlords.
Technically speaking the cat was stolen property depending on local regulations it could be “theft by taking”. The landlord should be rewarded for getting it back to its original owner. If I had been on the jury I’d have awarded the tenant $1.00.
It wasn’t the tenant’s pet The tenant stole it first. The landlord simply took steps to return it to its owner.
“At the time it was”
So if I steal your car and sell it that’s OK with you because at the time it was my car. Nice logic genius.
He found the cat as a stray. The landlord stole the cat and gave it to his girlfriend and had her take it to a shelter.
Older cats are often kept in shelters for less then a week before they are put down.
But in this case they scanned it and discovered that it was chipped. So Frank lived and was returned to his proper home.
But there is a level of malice here that is quite amazing. You steal someone's pet and send it to it's probable death?
Pets are property under CA law, doesn’t matter how much you love it. The replacement cost from a pet shop is the cap of damages. I could see a larger verdict if the LL slaughtered the animal in front of the tenant or otherwise was cruel and the tenant saw it [emotional distress claim]. But the story says the animal was taken to a shelter and apparently put down - happens every day and performed as a function of government, so that doesn’t explain it. Punitive damages are a function of actual damages [usually 3x cap], according to the US Supremes, so that can’t be it either.
No legal analysis of the explosive headline in the story either.
Maybe OR is different, but I doubt it.
Jury emotionalism is not part of just compensation. This verdict will be thrown out by the sitting judge or overturned on appeal.
This nonsense is what you get when your “peers” are a bunch of blue hairs and beta boys.
Well, unless that landlord is independently wealthy, I doubt the plaintiff will see much of the money.
Decades ago, my then mother-in-law got a judgement of about $500, against an uninsured motorist who damaged her car, with the judge ordering her to pay $100 a month. Of course, the culprit claimed she had no way to get the money to her, since she had no transportation, no checking account from which to send a check in the mail, etc. So my then mother-in-law had to go to the “hood” and get payment from her in cash. I’ll say this much for her, she had guts.
Who said he found the cat as a stray? Why it was the same person who claimed he owned it. What a coincidence. I had a dog stolen - lifted right out of my back yard. When it was recovered (because fortunately someone saw who took it) the thief claimed he didn’t know it belonged to anyone. Ie a stray.
Funny. That did not seem to be the contention of the owner. Because they seem to have accepted the fact that their pet strayed.
I think you might be engaging in a bit of projection.
You did not read the article did you.
In my experience cats patrol a large area which they consider theirs. But they almost always return at feeding time. If they don’t who’s to say if the cat was stolen or strayed. When growing up we had quite a few and none of them ever missed more than one or two days. Even the barn cats kept regular mealtimes so I find the stray theory for a cat that was a pet farfetched.
Enough of them are pets that it is normal for the shelters to scan them for chips.
So yes, cats do stray and people do find them and take them in.
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