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Defective Pet Foods: New Litigation Theories Or Just the Same Old Chow? An Animal Law Attorney Argues for More Than Market Value Damages

By Bruce Wagman
May 30, 2007

One of the biggest stories in product liability in the past month has been the recall of tens of thousands of cans of food sold to consumers to feed to their companion animals. The news has attracted public attention because it is a tragedy of potentially epic proportion: Somewhere between 20 (according to the FDA) and 20,000-plus (by extrapolating statisticians) of the nation's nonhuman family members have developed serious illnesses and/or died from eating food containing something very toxic that has caused renal failure (still being debated). Furthermore, in the litigation arena, plaintiffs' attorneys ranging from sole practitioners to the large class action law firms most often in the headlines have all filed actions representing both individual clients and broad-ranging classes of thousands of individuals affected by the poisoned food. (At the time of this writing, more than 30 cases had supposedly been filed across the country.)

The next-in-line Multidistrict Litigation Panel case, called something like 'In re Tainted Pet Food Litigation,' may be in the works. The facts and the human-interest stories have all the excitement and energy of one of those infrequent headline-grabbing disasters of the last few decades. In many ways, this story resembles one of those class actions, with thousands of unnamed individuals represented by lawyers seeking substantial compensation from a company or companies that allegedly ignored the potential fatal harm caused by their conduct. As usual, the offending conduct has been alleged to be something between simply negligent at best, to knowingly reckless and fraudulent at worst.

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