Lawsuit of the Day

Lawsuit of the Day: Hamster Trouble

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We’re not considering a spin-off blog on animals and the law. But maybe we should given the amount of reporting we’ve done on our furry friends recently, including a lascivious wombat, a hedgehog as a weapon, and a dog in mortal peril. Now, we’ve got a diseased hamster to add to the mix:

A Whitman woman whose husband died less than a month after receiving a tainted liver transplant says a diseased hamster purchased at PetSmart is to blame for her premature widowhood.
Nancy Magee, 51, is suing the Phoenix-based pet industry giant for negligence.
Businessman Thomas J. Magee was 54 in 2005 when he was one of three people who died after receiving organs donated by a woman who had contracted lynphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) from a sickly hamster she bought on March 19, 2005, at a PetSmart store in Warwick, R.I., according to Nancy Magee’s complaint in U.S. District Court.

ATL does not have a heart of stone. We are sympathetic to the woman and her loss. We just don’t dig the logic in placing the blame with PetSmart. Unless the logic is that a pet store has deeper pockets than a hospital.
Forget PetSmart. That sickly hamster better be behind bars.
Widow sues PetSmart in transplant death [The Boston Herald]

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