Deal would settle 100-plus lawsuits over tainted pet food

A year after tainted pet food led to the deaths of thousands of dogs and cats nationwide, a proposed settlement was announced yesterday that would resolve more than 100 class-action lawsuits filed by grief-stricken pet owners in the United States and Canada.

Details of the "agreement in principle" were not disclosed during the hearing in U.S. District Court in Camden. The tentative settlement followed months of negotiations between lawyers for companies that manufactured or distributed the poisonous chow and lawyers for pet owners, who had sought compensation for out-of-pocket costs including veterinarian and medicine bills and burial fees.

"Good news, Your Honor," lawyer Sherrie R. Savett, representing pet owners, told U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman, who is handling the nationwide consolidation of pet-food lawsuits. "The parties have come to an agreement in principle on all the major terms."

The lawsuits were filed in the wake of massive recalls of dog and cat food last spring. While owners watched helplessly as their pets got sick and, in numerous cases, died, more than 120 varieties were pulled off the market.

The primary target was Menu Foods Inc., the Canada-based manufacturer of about 100 of the tainted product lines. But other companies that manufactured or distributed the food also are defendants.

Amy W. Schulman, a lawyer for Menu Foods, said the planned settlement would resolve litigation in Canada as well as the United States. "It's truly a proposed global resolution," she told Hillman.

In a news release yesterday, the company said that its estimate for recall costs remained unchanged at $55 million Canadian, and that the eventual settlement would be funded by various defendants, including Menu Foods and its product-liability insurer.

The pet-food scare led to criminal charges in February against two Chinese companies, a Las Vegas business, and their officers in an alleged scheme to make and import tainted wheat gluten, an ingredient in many pet-food products.

The civil litigation, meanwhile, focused attention on the long-standing legal view of animals as property, with a fair market value but no intrinsic worth as de facto family members.

Neither Schulman nor Savett would say whether the proposed settlement would advance the legal standing of animals in the law.

Schulman said in an interview outside the courtroom that the case was significant because it was a forerunner of cases involving recalled products from China.

"I don't think it was about animal rights," Schulman said.

According to Savett, settlement documents will be submitted by May 1 for Hillman's review. The judge set a hearing for May 14 on whether the settlement should receive preliminary approval. Along the way, plaintiff pet owners will be advised of the terms of the planned settlement. It then would be subject to final approval, probably in a matter of months.

Pet owners, meanwhile, have continued to grieve. One law firm involved in the litigation still has a memorial page on its Web site. As of yesterday, it held homages to Meowser, Cuddles and Indiana Jones, among more than 100 other pets.

In one tribute last month to a dog named Chachee Boy, a pet owner wrote that "it still hurts so bad knowing you died from the food I fed you. . . . But pup I am still fighting for you and all the rest who have suffered so horribly."

Yesterday's hearing was delayed by an evacuation of Camden's federal courthouse after a suspicious device was found nearby. A German shepherd, led by a county deputy sheriff, scoured the building.

Only after Shadow failed to sniff out trouble were people, including about a dozen lawyers involved in the pet-food case, allowed back inside.