Airline sued for $5m over lost cat

A SAN FRANCISCO couple is suing Air Canada for $5 million claiming the airline lost their tab

Their lawyer said the suit is the largest ever filed over a cat. Andrew Wysotski and Lori Learmont accuse the company of negligence, emotional distress, fraud and false advertising.

The couple said they placed 15-year-old Fu in an airline-supplied plastic crate, but on arrival in San Francisco they discovered that Fu’s crate had a large hole in a corner, the front door was broken and open, and the cat was gone.

The couple told the Toronto Star newspaper they did not file the suit for money, but to draw attention to a problem at the airline.

The couple who set out for San Francisco with Fu and four other cats last August, say Air Canada, its cargo-handling company and certain individuals at San Francisco International Airport are guilty of negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, fraud and false advertising.

The suit names Air Canada, along with Continental Airlines, the firm contracted to unload the Canadian airline in San Francisco, and 10 individuals who were agents and employees of the two airlines on the day Fu vanished.

“It’s not about the money,” Mr Wysotski, a self-employed artist, said from his California home yesterday. Even though a year has passed since Fu disappeared, his voice broke as he talked about the cat he had raised from birth.

Fu, 15, was the daughter of Fe, who also lived all her life with Mr Wysotski, in Oshawa.

“It’s more the attention to the problem than the money,” he said.

After Fu disappeared, Mr Wysotski said he discovered through research that each year at least 5,000 animals are either lost or killed by the airline industry.

Papers filed in the California Superior Court in San Francisco by animal rights lawyer David Blatte allege that before Mr Wysotski and Ms Learmont, both 37, boarded the fateful flight at Pearson International Airport, they got airline-approved plastic crates for Fu and the other cats. Fu was alone in one, another cat was in another and two were together in the third crate.

An Air Canada spokesperson said that because there is litigation pending, it “will confine its comments to legal proceedings”.

Last year, the airline handled 27,600 shipments of animals, about 90 per cent of which were pets, she said.