Stormy v. Menu Foods: A Lawsuit

I tend to stick with the more humorous side of life.  Given my job as a lawyer, I see a lot of distress and troubles everyday and have to be serious upwards of 50 hours per week.  So in my hobbies, I like to seek out the lighter side.

But sometimes our personal lives and our professional lives intersect, as they did in the past week when I was retained to file a lawsuit on behalf of Sweetie because one of our cats got sick off that tainted pet food.

The cat in question is Stormy Jet Risotto.  (All cats have three names, as I explain here).  Out of our three cats, she's definitely the most spoiled, and that's a stiff competition.  When Stormy was just a kitten, she had some food allergies to the less expensive foods, and our vet recommended feeding her a better quality of food.  So we picked... Iams "cuts and gravy."  Which Stormy has eaten religiously since she was a kitten, three and sometimes five times a day.  Always served to her on a plate, hand-fed, by Sweetie or the middle daughter.  (At times, when I've stopped home during the day, I've been under strict instruction to feed her, as well.)

About two or three weeks ago, Stormy began getting sick, but not in any obvious way.  There was some urinating on the carpet.  We chalked that up to her being temperamental and possibly upset that we'd had people over.  (Stormy hates people.  If you don't live in our house, you don't see her, as a rule.  My father-in-law saw her for the first time last Christmas.  She's six years old and we've had her for five.) 

 Then she began vomiting.  We thought maybe she didn't like her food anymore, or the food allergies were back.

 Then she got listless and tired, unusual for a cat that could catch the occasional mouse in our house and liked to roam from window to window tracking the birds (and raccoons) around the yard.

Then, last week, we learned for the first time that Menu Foods and Iams were recalling their pet food because it was killing pets.  So we got a list of the foods and found that the more expensive foods that we'd been feeding Stormy so that she would stay healthy were, in fact, the tainted group and she might be dying.

We took her to the vet, who recommended that we take her to the animal hospital.  Which raised the first tough question:  We have five kids and are putting a new roof on the house and have bills to pay and athletic fees and need spring clothes and medicines... and just how much do you spend trying to help a pet?  How much before you're just wasting money? 

So we took her to the animal hospital, and gave strict instructions on how often to check in and how much we were willing to spend -- $1,000 -- and they checked her out and gave us the verdict:  Tainted food causing enlarged kidneys.

She was in there two days.  The total spent so far is a little over our budget -- $1,200, which may mean that we don't go on vacation this year, the first vacation in several years for us and the kids.  But we got her back home and the vets are hopeful that she'll live. 

Live, that is, if we can make sure that she eats 1/4 teaspoon of potassium powder for a week, and if we give her subcutaneous potassium fluids every night for a week.  Have you ever held onto a cat and stuck a needle in between her shoulder blades?  I've never heard such crying.

And it's not certain, and it may get more expensive, which would force that difficult choice again.

But I'm not without resources, and I want others to know how to do this or who to contact, too. 

So I spent time last week researching the latest in products liability law, and updating my information on that.  Friday (the 23rd) I began drafting the summons and complaint.  (The summons is what forces defendants to answer your claims; the complaint is the claims.) 

And I'm filing a lawsuit today, here in Wisconsin, against Menu Foods and Iams, as well as against Wal-Mart and Woodman's (a local grocery store), those last two being where we bought the food.  (In Wisconsin, retailers can be held liable for defective products under certain conditions.)

The suit alleges that the food makers put out a defective product, and left it out there knowing that they had a problem.  That's the lawsuit in a nutshell.  I may post copies of it online if I get to it. 

It seeks compensatory damages for vet bills and future vet bills.  In Wisconsin, you can't get "emotional distress" damages for the loss of a pet, not right now.  As a lawyer, I have the opportunity to argue to change that law and may do so, but I'm not making that argument yet.

And it seeks punitive damages, because Menu Foods and Iams, and potentially the retailers, knew they had a problem on their hands.  They've admitted that they were aware of complaints, but did not warn consumers.  And they've only recently begun to recall foods off the retailers' shelves.  Sweetie was at our grocery store over the weekend and saw the food still on the shelves.

 From here, the lawsuit will be served on those defendants and they will have to file answers within twenty days of service.

I will continue to post updates on both Stormy and the lawsuit here as I get a chance and as the case develops; it'll give a chance for you to not just watch and see if Stormy lives and if we can make corporations take their responsibilities to consumers seriously, but also to watch how a lawsuit actually develops. 

If you live in Wisconsin and have a pet that was affected, you can contact me about this and I'll see if I can help you, but you should definitely contact a lawyer no matter where you live. 

(And don't join a class-action lawsuit or file one; those don't help you and don't hurt the companies.  They help the lawyers who file them.  I'm not interested in helping myself; I'm interested in helping my clients, which is why I don't file class action lawsuits.)