Pets are the sustenance of people's feelings. In recent years, more and more people choose to take their pets to pet shops to enjoy various services such as grooming, bathing, and foster care. But if a pet dies while receiving services in a pet shop, how to determine the liability for compensation, and how to define property damage? Recently, the People's Court of Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province tried such a case.
On the afternoon of March 11 this year, Ms. Gao handed her 2-year-old American shorthair cat to a pet shop for bathing at a pet shop. The charge was 120 yuan per time. According to the surveillance video, at about 4:30 in the afternoon, the pet shop owner Mr. Yang continued to resist and struggle with fierce confrontation behaviors during the process of blowing air for the pet cat, until he suffered shock. After that, Mr. Yang sent the cat to a pet hospital in Yushan Town, Kunshan City, but the rescue failed. The pet cat died of shock that afternoon. After the incident, because Ms. Gao and Mr. Yang did not reach an agreement on compensation matters, she filed a lawsuit with the Kunshan Court, requesting the defendant Mr. Yang to pay more than 40,000 yuan for various expenses.
In court, Ms. Gao argued that the cat died because a rope was tied to the neck during the bath and the pet shop owner caught the cat’s tail, which caused the cat to struggle and was strangled by the rope. Mr. Yang believes that the cat’s death is related to the sterilization operation, which will affect the cat’s health. As a beauty agency rather than a veterinary shop, he bathed the cat by visually checking that the wound was intact. Mr. Yang also showed the description of the grooming process, the photo of the employee bitten by the cat, and the photo of the rope to prove that the cat was in a bad condition before bathing that day, emotionally unstable, bitten the clerk, and the rope tied to the cat was an activity Yes, it will not cause suffocation. After the trial, the
court held that, according to the on-site surveillance video, the pet cat resisted and struggled to shock and died while the defendant Mr. Yang was blowing the cat. Although there is currently no evidence to prove the specific cause of death of the pet cat, when the defendant finds that the pet cat is abnormal during the service, he should generally take necessary comfort measures, suspend the air blow, or seek the pet owner’s opinion before deciding whether to continue. However, the defendant was at that time Failure to take proper measures and fail to fulfill the duty of care. Based on this, the court held that the defendant had performed improper service and was liable for breach of contract to compensate for losses in accordance with the law.
According to Ms. Gao, the kitten she bought was about 2500 yuan at the market price at the time, and the actual cost was 1800 yuan after the discount. Ms. Gao also showed the details of the expenditures on cat food, bathing, sterilization, utensils, training and other items and items since raising the cat, claiming that the property loss of the pet cat’s death was 35,944 yuan. Mr. Yang does not agree with this. He believes that the purchase cost of the same breed of pet cat is 800 yuan, the market value of the cat at the time of the incident is 1,500 yuan, the general raising cost is 350 yuan/month, and the total cost of 18 months is 6,300 yuan. Because the two parties had big differences on the value of pet cats, the Kunshan court commissioned a veterinary association to evaluate the value of pet cats and issue an evaluation conclusion. After reviewing the relevant evaluation opinions, the court visited the Kunshan market during the trial period to understand the market value of cats of the same breed, and after comprehensively integrating the actual breeding situation of the pet cat, it determined the property value of the pet cat as 6,000 yuan. In summary, the court found that the defendant, a treasure pet shop, compensated Ms. Gao for property losses of 6000 yuan and an evaluation fee of more than 3000 yuan.
Source: People's Court News
Author: Dou Chun Ran Wang Danni
Editor: History of Zi Jing
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