Pets Have Value

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The pet product and service industry, including shelters, pounds, pet food companies, veterinarians, boarding facilities, and others, are not shy about exploiting what they call “the deep bond humans develop with their pets” when people write checks to them.

And yet the industries that benefit most from the public’s love and concern for their four-legged family members turn around and fight efforts to increase compensation for the victims of harm when it is their turn to put their money where their mouths are. Instead, they encourage courts to rely on 19th-century case law that held animals were worthless property, “analogous, in law, to a… table or lamp.” 

As long as courts shield these companies, they have little incentive to provide better care or safer products. And given the deep and profound relationships between people and their companion animals, our legal system should recognize their importance. When others entrusted to care for our animal companions fail to do so, courts should compensate people in a manner that adequately reflects the depth of their suffering or loss.

We owe it to the animals and the people who love them to do so.

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