Reply #23: I agree re vet costs, disposal of the body. [View All]

[Divernan]

but doubt there's any case law re "loss of consortium" with a pet.

And of course before one can recover anything, one must prove negligence on the part of the meter reader. What was the size and color of the dog? Was the gate or fence signed that there was a dog on the property? Had the dog ever escaped the yard before? Was the dog visible to the meter reader? How big was the yard? Lots of landscaping? Was the latch on the gate in good working order? How long after the meter reader was there before the owner found out the dog was missing? Was the owner home at the time? How often did he check on the dog? Might anyone else have left the gate open? Etc., etc. IF some lawyer took this case (maybe some dog-loving atty. who would do this for free), this thing could drag out for many months or even years. That's a lot of stress and emotional wear and tear on the dog owner, and everyone else involved. I hope that the owner can get a reasonable settlement from the utility company simply representing himself.

I've done a god bit of pro bono work for elderly and poor people. I know it's really hard to find lawyers who will do pro bono work. For those who will, there are tons of poor people who desperately need pro bono legal help with child support, abuse situations, landlord-tenant disputes, health insurance coverage questions, etc. These can be life or death situations. My cases involved situations like forcing a slumlord to quickly correct a life-threatening, building code violation re gas heating; forcing a health insurer to quickly approve a specialist to perform surgery on a cancer patient (where time was of the essence), and getting a two year old little boy away from his ex-con mother & her boyfriend who were renting him out to pedophiles in Florida, and out of the dangerous "care" of the Florida "child protection" agency which had just about been conned into returning the little boy to his mother, and safely back to some normal members of his family in another state. (They got him into therapy quickly and he seems to have recovered from the horror of his early years.) None of these matters involved a trial, or even formally filing a complaint or lawsuit. They involved a lot of jawboning on the phone and threatening to bring actions before state agencies. Lawsuits drag on for years and I always tell people to stay out of court and away from juries if at all possible.