Frivilous lawsuits just get worse and worse

rudedog40

rudedog40

Member
This lady is sueing Petsmart because back in 2005, they sold a lady a hamster that was infected with some virus. The lady who bought the hamster, apparently contracted the disease. She died of a stroke, and her liver was dontaed to the husband of the lady who is sueing. The husband supposedly died of this disease the hamster had. Three other people who received donated organs from this woman either became seriuosly ill or died. How ould Petsmart know this hamster has this disease? Should they have to test and screen every animal they get in for some disease?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24055710...5773?GT1=31037
 
m0nk

m0nk

Active Member

Originally Posted by rudedog40
http:///forum/post/2560329
This lady is sueing Petsmart because back in 2005, they sold a lady a hamster that was infected with some virus. The lady who bought the hamster, apparently contracted the disease. She died of a stroke, and her liver was dontaed to the husband of the lady who is sueing. The husband supposedly died of this disease the hamster had. Three other people who received donated organs from this woman either became seriuosly ill or died. How ould Petsmart know this hamster has this disease? Should they have to test and screen every animal they get in for some disease?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24055710...5773?GT1=31037
Yeah, Petsmart shouldn't have any liability here... now if the family of the original lady who died of this disease would sue Petsmart, I could see that being a little less frivolous. If anyone is at fault it's the organ bank that didn't test the organs for whatever diseases the donor may have had to contract.
 
crimzy

crimzy

Active Member
Now I don't know all the facts here but I don't think there's enough information to determine whether the case is frivolous or not.
For instance, if the hamster was clearly ill (ie. losing fur, lethargic, not eating, dying) at the time of the sale, then doesn't the store owe some duty to customers or other people that may come into contact with the sick animal?
Now I know that we all love the old rhetoric, lawyers are the devil, but what if some store sold your child an obviously infected animal and your child died as a result? People here are always complaining about pet stores doing anything to try and make a buck. Don't you think a case like this may help a pet store become a bit more responsible in their business practices?
What if the animal was a dog, and the store knew that the dog was the product of a puppy mill and/or inbreeding? There are so many possible scenarios that I don't see how you can determine that this case is frivolous.
 
tj51

tj51

Member
Being in the legal profession, I've seen a lot worse......I guess the question is would a reasonable person expect to be able to go into a petstore and buy a hampster that was disease free? It is unfortunate for Petsmart but part of the problems of being in business. Just as the drug companies get sued if there is a side effect of a drug, even if they didn't know it. On this particular story, I'll bet the hospital/donor center has been brought in on the lawsuit.
Better story.........
One night when the high school seniors were having a graduation party, a girl stayed home not wanting to partake in the partying. Instead she baked cookies for the older people of her neighborhood. She left some cookies on an older ladie's doorstep with a sign, "these were made especially for you." The lady freaked out thinking someone was trying to poison her and sued the girl and won.
There is a web-site about stupid jury awards but I'm not sure of the name. It has stuff like the lady who sued McDonalds because she tripped over a kid and won funny thing is the kid was her's stuff like that
However, sometimes we don't know the whole story as in the McDonald's coffee story. McDonald's had been warned that their coffee was to hot. They ignored the warnings because the hotter the coffee, the more aromatic it making people want it. When the lady suffered the burns and the jury gave her a million, that figure represented the coffee profits for McDonald's for ONE day.
 
cowfishrule

cowfishrule

Active Member
Originally Posted by crimzy
http:///forum/post/2560338
For instance, if the hamster was clearly ill (ie. losing fur, lethargic, not eating, dying) at the time of the sale, then doesn't the store owe some duty to customers or other people that may come into contact with the sick animal?
if the animal was clearly ill, why would you purchase it?
would you buy a tang covered with ick ?
in the end, it all comes down to personal responsibility.
if the store knowingly sold a seriously ill animal, i might understand. but then again, why would you buy a seriously ill animal?
instead of persecuting a criminal, this court will instead have to deal with the above case for a couple of days.
 
crimzy

crimzy

Active Member
Originally Posted by COWFISHRULE
http:///forum/post/2560394
if the store knowingly sold a seriously ill animal, i might understand.
So you are advocating the old "head-in-the-sand defense". Meaning that as long as the store can claim ignorance then they can go try to make their money by selling anything, even if the result causes illness or death to the purchaser (who is assumed to be less knowledgeable about the purchase).
 
cowfishrule

cowfishrule

Active Member
was the animal tested? if so, and it came back clean, and showed no visible signs of disease, then i would consider this an act of nature.
you buy a tang. it is perfectly healthy and eating at the store. it develops a case of ick once it is in your tank, and it wipes out your entire tank. do you sue the store?
 
rudedog40

rudedog40

Member
Based on the news story, the lady who originally purchased the hamster didn't appear to have died from contracting this LCMV virus from this hamster. She died of a stroke, and her organs were donated to these individuals who did supposedly die of this LCMV virus. I'd be interested in finding out if the LCMV virus is what caused the stroke. If so, I agree that the family of the widow has every right to sue Petsmart for her death. I just don't think it's justified for these families to sue Petsmart when it was beyond their control to keep this virus from infecting the people who received the donated organs. As others stated, that's the responsibility of the hospital to test all donated tissues for any possible diseases beore implanting them into recipients.
Guess I need to look up this LCMV virus. I bought a male/female breeder pair of hamsters for my daughter so she could use the babies to feed her snake. I've got six hamsters running around in a cage, and a dead snake (the snake died of something else prior to tthe hamsters having their first litter). We plan on giving away the babies now, but if they could potentially have this LCMV virus, I don't want to be responsible for causing serious illness or death.
I did find this article that I imagine is what started the Petsmart lawsuit:
What happened recently to bring attention to LCMV?
In May 2005, CDC received reports of four solid organ-transplant recipients with unknown illness. All were infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) from a common organ donor. Three of the four organ recipients died from LCMV infection.
Epidemiologic investigation traced the source of the virus to a pet hamster recently purchased by the donor from a pet store in Rhode Island. LCMV testing of other rodents at the pet store identified three other LCMV-infected rodents (two hamsters and a guinea pig). All four pet rodents had been supplied by a single distributor, MidSouth Distributors in Ohio. During this investigation, it was determined that LCMV-infected pet rodents might have been transported from the Ohio facility to pet stores in the northeastern and midwestern United States as early as February 2005.
 
crimzy

crimzy

Active Member
Originally Posted by COWFISHRULE
http:///forum/post/2560408
was the animal tested? if so, and it came back clean, and showed no visible signs of disease, then i would consider this an act of nature.
you buy a tang. it is perfectly healthy and eating at the store. it develops a case of ick once it is in your tank, and it wipes out your entire tank. do you sue the store?
In your scenario, you would be correct. However without a clean bill of health we cannot guess that the animal did not show clear signs of disease. This is where we need some more facts... ie. was there any notice to the store that there may be a disease? In my opinion, this would be the key issue of the case.
 
rudedog40

rudedog40

Member
Originally Posted by crimzy
http:///forum/post/2560417
In your scenario, you would be correct. However without a clean bill of health we cannot guess that the animal did not show clear signs of disease. This is where we need some more facts... ie. was there any notice to the store that there may be a disease? In my opinion, this would be the key issue of the case.
I found another article on the virus, and the veterinary professionals state that there's really no accurate test for LCMV on live rodents. The only advice they give when purchasing a hamster or other rodent from a pet store is to avoid animals that are lethargic, have diarhea, don't eat well, and have a rough coat. I doubt the widow had any idea this hamster had the virus. Before this story came out, I didn't even know something like this could be contracted. The experts do say that the possibility of contracting LCMV from rodents purchased from pet stores is less than 1%.
 
tj51

tj51

Member
Once again, you all are living in a perfect world. Consider a person who contacts food poisoning from a piece of bad fish. The restraunt would have no way of knowing (in some cases) that the fish might be bad, but is still liable. We are in a litigation happy society and if you operate a business that is the risk. Then again, Petsmart always has the option of investigating their source of the hampsters and "passing the buck" if they can show that their wholesaler should have been aware, etc.
 
tj51

tj51

Member
"its not the lawyers that are the problem, its the courts. they accept these BS cases instead of persecuting criminals".
Wrong.......in America we have to right to bring suit against anyone who we feel has harmed us. The Court can decide if there is negligence or damages, but it is not the fault of the Court that someone brings a lawsuit. Having said that, if a Court feels that a person is abusing the system with frivilous lawwuits, they do have the option of sanctioning that party.
 
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