Owner of burned cat wins appeals court ruling

Max, the Spokane Valley cat who was set afire by teenagers almost three years ago, “didn’t die in vain” thanks to a precedent-setting court decision, an attorney said Friday.

A ruling by the Spokane branch of the Washington Court of Appeals recognizes legally what pet owners already knew, Bellingham attorney Adam Karp said: “The relationship we have with a pet is not the same as we have with a washing machine.”

Karp, who specializes in animal law, represented Max’s owner, Bernadette Womack, in a lawsuit against three youths who poured gasoline on Max and put a match to him near Chase Middle School.

Max was so severely burned he had to be euthanized three days later.

Womack appealed a ruling in which Spokane County Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque took the traditional position that pets are valued as property.

“Although Max was a beloved family pet providing comfort and companionship to the Womack family, market value can be established for similarly situated 2-year-old tomcats,” Leveque wrote in a ruling that nevertheless awarded Womack $5,000 for her emotional distress.

No longer, a three-judge Court of Appeals panel said Thursday: “For the first time in Washington, we hold malicious injury to a pet can support a claim for, and be considered a factor in measuring, a person’s emotional distress damages.”

The court distinguished Max’s case from an earlier one in which another appellate court said a jury was improperly instructed to consider more than “fair market value” for a dog that was negligently run over by a car.

That case left the door open to above-market damages for an animal that is maliciously injured, as Max was, the Spokane-based appellate judges said Thursday.

Karp believes the ruling may lead to above-market-value awards for negligent, as well as malicious, injuries to pets. But he conceded other attorneys may not share his interpretation.

Karp also conceded the ruling had little effect in Max’s case. It was a matter of losing a battle and winning a war.

The Court of Appeals said Leveque properly dismissed a number of legal theories under which Womack sought compensation.

Leveque’s ruling didn’t say how he arrived at his $5,000 award, but the Court of Appeals noted that the amount could have been based partly on the distress Womack suffered when her son was harassed by one of the teens who burned Max.

Womack sued Jason R. Brumback and Rusty V. Rardon, as well as their parents.

Brumback and Rardon, 17 at the time they ignited Max in July 2003, pleaded guilty in juvenile court to first-degree animal cruelty and received deferred sentences that required them to perform 150 hours of community service.

Rardon and Brumback were supposed to perform 50 of their community service hours at a local animal shelter, but no shelter would have them.

In the course of Womack’s lawsuit, Karp said, it was discovered that a young adult, Jayson Anderson, also participated in the assault on Max. Anderson was added as a defendant.

Meanwhile, the Brumback family agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement and was removed from the lawsuit.

Anderson and the Rardon family, who represented themselves in Superior Court, didn’t respond to Womack’s appeal, Karp said. Because of that, he added, it would be very difficult for them to ask for a state Supreme Court review. Court records show no criminal charges against Anderson.

Neither Anderson nor the Rardon family could be located immediately for comment.