damages tort new-zealand animals damage-mitigation
Is there duty to mitigate damages by killing and replacing injured animal instead of curing it?
<p>Say somebody ill-treated my animal which I kept as a pet. It got severely injured. To survive, it had to stay at the veterinary for 2 weeks. The bill was 20x times higher than the market price of the animal.</p>

<p>If I then attempted to claim damages, would my claim be rebuffed on the basis that I should have "mitigated" the costs by just killing the animal and buying a new one?</p>

<p>Things, especially but not only living things, have value beyond the price at which they can be bought and sold - always assuming they <em>can</em> be bought and sold. The value of a specific pet cat is not the cost of a generic kitten. </p>

<p>The purpose of damages is to restore you, as far as money can, to the position you were in before the wrong-doers actions occurred. Your duty to mitigate is to do all that is reasonable to minimize the costs - that may mean that you have a duty to choose treatment plan A over treatment plan B if A is cheaper than B and the prognosis is similar - it does not mean you have to choose euthanasia.</p>

<p>The defendant is free to argue that you acted unreasonably but given that vet bills <em>typically</em> run to 20x or more the price of a new animal, I don't think they would be successful.</p>

<p>Of course, if the animal were an economic asset, like a farm animal, rather than a pet, then a purely economic outlet may be reasonable.</p>
