Monographs

Harming Companion Animals: Liability and Damages

"Harming Companion Animals: Liability and Damages" has been written for the benefit of the layperson whose companion animal has been harmed by negligent or intentional conduct (or, occasionally, by a breach of contract).

Accordingly, the monograph has kept the legal jargon to a minimum, mostly expressing legal concepts in lay terms (except when using quotes from actual court decisions).

"Harming Companion Animals: Liability and Damages" does not deal with criminal conduct. There are currently laws in every state criminalizing illegal behavior toward animals in general, and companion animals in particular. However, because the monograph is intended to arm the layperson in dealing with the civil consequences of negligent and intentional acts, it does not cover criminal conduct.

The monograph’s analysis consists of two major parts.

Part I deals with liability resulting from wrongful conduct. Someone must have done something either negligently or intentionally (or even through breach of contract) to cause harm to a companion animal.

If there is liability, the second question, dealt with in Part II, is: what are the damages?

Even though most of the harm to companion animals results from veterinary malpractice, "Harming Companion Animals: Liability and Damages" should not be taken as a criticism (let alone a condemnation) of all veterinarians.

On the contrary.

Although among the thousands and thousands of veterinarians in the United States there are some bad apples—just as in the medical, legal, and all other professions—the vast majority of veterinarians and their staffs are caring, dedicated, competent, healers who feel deeply about the animals they treat.

For them, all of us who share our lives with companion animals are eternally grateful.
 

The Policy, Law and Morality of Mandatory Spay/Neuter 

It is estimated that approximately seventy thousand puppies and kittens are born in the United States every day. Many are born into households whose members cannot provide for them, or mistakenly believe they can but later learn otherwise and then relinquish the animals.

In good conscience, this country can no longer countenance the abhorrent cyclical spectacle of endless companion animal birth and death, turning blind eyes and deaf ears to the silent cries of those who did not ask to be born, let alone ask to die.

Mandatory spay/neuter may not be the only solution, but it is one solution—and it must be given a chance. And now!

At this very moment, literally countless numbers of dogs, certainly hundreds of thousands, are held captive around the world in wretched conditions, while being used and abused as living breeding machines by conscienceless breeders, facilitators and commercial retail sales outlets whose only concern is for their own profit.

Because much of that abuse occurs in the United States, and because ISAR's self-imposed mandate is the protection of animals, we have prepared a comprehensive Monograph containing ISAR's Model Statute Regulating Dog Breeding, Facilitation and Sales. In effect, our Monograph is a brief in support of our Model Statute.

ISAR's Model Statute's imposition of tough regulations on breeders, facilitators and commercial retail sales outlets is unapologetically draconian. This is our intention and our goal, because only in this manner can the dog-trade's participants' appalling, and often illegal, conduct be regulated out of existence once and for all.