In 2005, Petsmart sold a woman a hamster infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, or LCMV. The woman died of a stroke, and her liver was transplanted into Thomas Magee. He subsequently contracted LCMV and died from complications. His widow is now suing Petsmart. According to MSNBC, the lawsuit claims that “two other people who received organs from this woman died and one became seriously ill.”
The virus isn’t usually dangerous to healthy people, but can pose a threat to those with weak or suppressed immune systems—and, according to Wikipedia, Cylons.
At first we wondered why the hospital wasn’t to blame (if anyone is) for not screening the organs properly before shoving them into people. But a 2005 article (also from MSNBC) on a very similar case—no names are given, but the timeline and details match up—indicates that the donor and her organs were screened and didn’t show any sign of infection. In that article, a Centers for Disease Control official indicates that pretty much everyone was taken by surprise:
Though there’s no evidence that the deaths are anything but rare, recent discoveries that rabies and West Nile virus can spread through donated organs has officials worried that the latest virus might have gone undetected before now.
“We don’t know how commonly it occurs,” said Dr. Matthew Kuehnert, assistant director of blood safety for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’re learning as we go here. This is a new phenomenon.”
Petsmart immediately euthanized the rest of the “merchandise” and shipped it to the CDC for testing, so we’re not sure how they’re to blame for negligence in this case.
“Widow sues Petsmart over husband’s death” [MSNBC] (Thanks to Doug!)
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Shouldn’t the hospital be being sued for not testing the organs before the transplant?
If anyone were going to sue Petsmart it ought to be the family of the woman who bought the hamster. It isn’t reasonable to expect Petsmart to be able to control whether her organs ended up in other people.
@GoldHoops: My bad, I didn’t carefully read the post. Wow. The whole thing is very sad and disturbing.
@GoldHoops: Did you even read the article?
At first we wondered why the hospital wasn’t to blame (if anyone is) for not screening the organs properly before shoving them into people. But a 2005 article (also from MSNBC) on a very similar case-no names are given, but the timeline and details match up-indicates that the donor and her organs were screened and didn’t show any sign of infection.
@Rectilinear Propagation: were should be is
So exactly how do they test organs before donation? Do they have some broad spectrum test that they run that is supposed to catch any and all infections, viruses or bad bacteria etc? Or do they do a battery of tests, guessing what the most likely infections would be and just doing those?
There was something on the news last week about a donor that had cancer and gave that cancer to all the recipients.
@bohemian: And how can you screen for a multitude of things when organs are viable only for a short period of time?
That is the greatest lawsuit ever! And yes, they should sue the hospital instead…
From [www.cdc.gov]
Can hamsters be tested for LCMV?
We do not recommend testing any pet hamsters. Tests on live hamsters may be inaccurate.
So if there isn’t a reliable live hamster test for LCMV, how is Petsmart liable?
@bohemian: The test catch the big stuff usually, along with anything that would show up in a standard culture, but are unable to catch everything. If there is suspicion of something (meningitis, congenital disorder, ect) they will do a more rigorous screening.
The thought process is that if you are so bad off that you have to get an organ transplant then you assume the small risk that comes with it.
In this case the original woman didnt die of the infection, so there was no sense in wasting time and money checking for something so obscure. This is a classic case of blaming the deep pockets.
Phrase of the day is “deep pockets” – they’re suing PetSmart because (a) PetSmart has $, and (b) it looks better to a jury to sue a company that sold a “defective” hamster than the hospital that’s doing life-saving (usually) organ transplants.
Maybe unless they sue everybody, their insurance will not pay up…
hey asshole lady – sue the hospital that did the transplant, not the store that sold a friggin hamster 3 rungs up the ladder of events.
By your logic, you could sue the breeder of the hamsters as well as the animals owned by another owner who transmitted the disease to those hamsters and so on and so forth.
@bohemian: They don’t really do much actual testing for organ donors. Remember that organs don’t really last that long once a person dies, maybe a few hours if you’re lucky. So you can’t really wait for lab results for something.
However, by looking at the overall health of the donor individual it can give you a good idea if they are a good donor. Also there are fairly simple blood tests that can be done to find COMMON things like Hep and such. Thus screening is mostly done empirically, aside from a few basic measures to screen out common things.
In this case PetSmart probably can’t be liable. There isn’t even a test for LCMV that’s even remotely reliable, so it’s not like you can say they didn’t test for it. Also hamsters that have LCMV might not exhibit any symptoms, so you could watch them for a month and they’d be healthy but still have LCMV. Again since LCMV infections are rare, there’s not a real pressing need to test for it on a large scale.
I’m sure Petsmart will just settle to get it out of the courts. But legally they don’t seem to be liable in any legal way for this pretty much fluke infection.
so a company sells a diseased animal which in turn leads to the deaths of three people… and consumerist labels the resulting lawsuit FRIVOLOUS?? wth?
This case is a perfect illustration of Americans’ need to blame somebody, anybody. A new or almost unknown phenomenon, as the CDC director pointed out, is by its nature hard to predict and guard against.
I understand that the man’s family is distraught. But sometimes people die and it’s not anyone’s fault.
@bobblack555: The breeders in this case have more liability than Petsmart does in reality. It’s already been established that the disease originated with the distributor, and not with Petsmart. And LVCM does not necessarily show symptoms in hamsters that have it, so PetSmart could not have even found it even if they were looking for sick animals in general.
With everything that unfortunate pet store animals go through before they arrive at their destination it’s truly amazing diseases like this aren’t more prevalent.
Although I feel sympathy for the family’s losses there are times when stuff just happens. Unless there was negligence on the part of Petsmart (they knew the animal was infected & sold it anyway) I can’t see how this is anything more than damned bad luck.
This seems frivolous to me! Why do people have to blame so much – it seems like you are taking a huge risk for taking any transplant and are bound to be problems that arise. Problems does not mean you should always sue!
@xay:
@Steve Trachsel, Ace:
so no one is liable? if you are willing to profit off of things by selling it, in this country that makes you liable if what you sell causes injury. whether you knew it, could know it, or whatever, is irrelevant.
@wdnobile: It’s frivolous in a few ways
1) The original LVCM infection did not originate within PetSmart. It has been determined the distributor was to blame for the initial infection.
2) There is no reliable test for LVCM detection. So you can’t say PetSmart was negligent because some kind of test was not performed.
3) LVCM infected hamsters do not necessarily show any symptoms. Thus even if PetSmart was monitoring the animals health, such an infection would not necessarily be obvious. Any symptoms also can takes weeks or month to even manifest. So you can’t make a claim that if they monitored the hamsters health it would have been caught.
4) LVCM is a rare infection, and has a very low mortality rate in general. Obviously transplant patients have compromised immune systems which make them less likely to fight off the infection. It is not practical to test for every type of infection whether its for pets, or for organ donors.
@bobblack555: You can’t really sue the hospital because you sign a waiver that prevents this. In this scenario, the hospital was not negligent in their duties so they’re not liable for what happened. It is unreasonable to have the hospital test for some rare rodent disease for an organ transplant. The original woman died of a stroke, thus there was no indication that she had some other bizarre underlying viral infection to be screened for.
QUICK!
Somebody get a shipment of hamsters to Starbuck STAT!
At least they didn’t have to nuke the store from orbit. It would have gotten messy, to say the very least.
@mikelotus: At best, the breeder is liable. But LCMV is a known risk of owning a hamster (I own two and I am meticulous about how I care for them and how I allow my son to handle them because of the risk of disease) and there is no evidence that Petsmart knowingly sold an infected hamster or had any reasonable way to determine whether a hamster is infected. Many pets are prone to carry diseases that can be passed to humans by flukes or improper handling – Google turtles if you don’t belive me – but a resulting illness is not an automatic liability.
I wonder what risks you waive when you accept a donor organ. I would assume you can’t sue the estate of the dead donor for passing along some disease. You probably also sign a release for the hospital, perhaps that is the reason they are not suing the hospital.
@mikelotus: Why is PetSmart financial “liable” in any way? This is why we see the “taking it seriously” line all the time, companies cant apologize for something beyond their control because people are just aching to sue.
If there was no negligence on the part of PetSmart, no foreseeable way to predict this outcome, no reasonable way to prevent it and no fault able to be put on them then way should they have to pay millions to defend/settle this suit. (Its also no coincidence that she is suing in Mass Superior)
@Nighthawke: The Orbital Redevelopment Platform division of Homeland Security did receive a petition for an ‘orbital cleansing’ of that paticular PetSmart. However the petition was denied due to a lack of illegal immigrants to man the command center. Also these new solar panels just aren’t giving us the 1.21 JigaWatts of output necessary to do an accurate orbital strike.
@mikelotus: Just because you sell something does not make you automatically liable if it kills somebody. Liability also requires negligence. “Negligence” would mean not exercising an ordinary or reasonable standard of care. It is not reasonable for PetSmart to screen every last rodent available for sale for an array of diseases that do not ordinarily cause any symptoms in humans.
A very large portion of the cats in the U.S. are infected with a parasite called Toxoplasma Gondii. While this parasite (which can be transmitted via cat feces/cat litter) is easily transmitted to cat owners, it usually does not cause any symptoms. (The parasite resides in the brain of the human and the cat for life.) However, during a particular stage of Toxoplasmosis, it can cause serious illness in immuno-compromised individuals, and can cause miscarriage in pregnant women. Nevertheless, no screening is done by shelters or pet stores for this parasite since it so common and impossible to eradicate from the feline population.
And this is for an infection that approx. 15% of the U.S. tests positive for. Screening every hamster for a disease almost unheard of in humans would be stupid and wasteful.
A hamster a day keeps the toasters away…
Slippery Slope
Not enough $ to sue the hospital, can’t find the original breeder.. the original donor is dead.. oh well, might as well sue whoever is available. PetSmart is a sitting duck here. I’d file a request for a summary dismissal..
Reminds me of the Sims Guinea Pig Disease. Gotta keep the cage clean.
I’m a bit ticked off that I most likely have toxoplasmosis. Not as bad as schistosomasis, malaria, or various other tropical parasites which will remain nameless for those of us compulsive enough to google them and gain a new neurosis.
My amateur, absolutely no training in psychology or grief counseling theory:
When someone dies of a something that isn’t considered “normal” or “expected” – old age or chronic disease – the survivors are obviously frustrated and angry and the way they cope with that frustration is by trying to find someone or something to blame and then either suing or pushing for legislation or rules changes that (theoretically) could have prevented the death. Sometimes there’s clear negligence or defect that could have – maybe should have – been noticed and fixed earlier. Sometimes, sadly, things just go wrong and while the cause of death is obvious after the fact, it just wasn’t something that would have been anticipated under normal circumstances or would have required an incredible level of vigilance.
It seems the latter is what happened in this case. I can understand her reaction, even if I don’t agree with her suit.
It’s funny how Consumerist commenters are so quick to blame any individual employee for bad company policy, but so quick to defend a company that is known to abuse and neglect animals in its care and to purchase them from a breeder that’s even worse. Rainbow Exotics brags on its OWN website about using stray cats to control escapees in the warehouse where they breed their animals.
This is truly a tragedy, because three people would be alive today had someone paid attention to the years of warnings animal lovers have shouted from the rooftops about the dangers Petsmart’s warehouse breeders’ lax standards and neglect pose to humans and pets. Petsmart in Colorado (and probably elsewhere too) recently had to stop selling birds due to a salmonella and psittacosis outbreak.
The conditions in which these animals are bred and kept are nothing short of horrific. Maybe a tragedy like this will call attention to the problem.
Pretty sure they tell you about the disease on the care sheet you get with the little critter. Most pet stores make you sign a thing that advises you that these diseases are possible.
I don’t know that they can test ofr/prevent the disease at their level as it may be possible that the little bugger got it after he left the store. I don’t know for sure, but if this goes through…kids everywhere will find it harder to get a pet hamster.
Oh and I think washing your hands after you touch the rat would keep you safe.
@Rectilinear Propagation: I have to agree with you there. I think their case is with the hospital.
@Saydrah: “Petsmart in Colorado (and probably elsewhere too) recently had to stop selling birds due to a salmonella and psittacosis outbreak”
Don’t know about that second thing, but salmonella can come from anywhere and again, washing your hands after you touch an animal will help keep you from getting sick. I thought people knew to do that.
@Saydrah: When all humans live in suitable conditions, then I’ll start caring about the animals.
@MercuryPDX: And to qualify that… I think their case is with the hospital, if at all.
@Saydrah: There is a PetSmart in NJ currently under a bird quarantine. It just states on signs that no birds are available for sale and it’s been that way for months. Maybe it’s what you pointed out. I bought a finch this week at a local pet store and had to fill out a form with my name and address because of potential oubreak (I guess).
If Petco’s supplier had been Chinese, thios story would have been spun differently.
/Just sayin…
While the hospital was the one that performed the operation, as stated by someone before, the time frame for transplanting organs is usually not large. And they usually only test for the most common potential problems. As stated in the article the woman dies of a stroke, so there wouldn’t be any indications to those removing her organs that she had died of LCMV, and my understanding is they usually only do testing if there seems to be an outbreak. If they knew there was an outbreak they would probably test for it, or not harvest the organs, but it is unrealistic to test for EVERY possibly transmittable disease unless there is very good reason to do so. I think it’s safe to say that more organs being harvested (as in 99.999999% of them) have had no exposure to LCMV.
So what exactly is Petsmart’s euthanization procedure?
Who gets this crappy detail? “You drew the short straw, please go kill the cute, fuzzy animals, box them up and ship them to the CDC.”
@bobblack555: The hamster started it. Sue the hamster’s family.
@nadmonk: Caveat organ transplant emptor.
@ChuckECheese: No, God started it. He created disease ridden hamsters in the first place.
@GoldHoops: I don’t understand how someone who has a transplant and doesn’t make it could go back on the animal community for fault. Last I checked transplants are not voluntary but life or death. Nothing is guaranteed and I’m sure that a waiver was signed before the transplant was performed to protect the hospital. The number of forms you have to go through to get care is incredible. I can’t imagine anyone has grounds to sue.
I believe there was an episode of scrubs just like this. It happens.
Why on earth would anyone buy a hamster? I mean seriously???