Couple Sues Airline Over Lost Cat
S A C R A M E N T O, Calif., Aug. 29 -- In what's being called the largest lawsuit of its kind, a couple is suing Air Canada for $5 million, claiming the airline lost one of their five cats.
Lori Learmont and Andrew Wysotski took an Air Canada flight last August, when they moved from Oshowa, Ontario, to Fairfield, Calif. Their cats had to travel in plastic crates in the plane's cargo hold.
When the couple arrived at San Francisco International Airport, they discovered one of the crates had broken open, according to the suit filed Aug. 16 in Superior Court in San Francisco. Fu, their 14-year-old tabby, was missing.
‘They’re Our Babies’
Flying their cats to San Francisco, they couple said, was an ordeal from the beginning. Learmont, 37, said they put the animals in regulation plastic crates.
"When it came time to leaving our cats, it was like a little conveyorbelt like, you know, at the grocery store. And my stomach was in knots," she told KXTV in Sacramento.
"I told the guy, 'Please take care of them. You know they're our babies.' "
Wysotski, 37, said that when the couple arrived at the San Francisco airport, they went to the baggage claim at about 1 a.m. to retrieve their pets. They noticed that all five of the animals' crates were severely banged up. One carrier was broken, and Fu was gone.
He said airline employees, after some discussion, told the couple that when baggage handlers took the cats off the plane, Fu's crate rolled down a ramp on its wheels, then crashed open.
Learmont was allowed to search for the missing animal for "seven minutes," but airline employees would not let him go onto the tarmac to help, Wysotski said.
Learmont and Wysotski say they complained to the airline for months, but were treated poorly from the start. Air Canada was reluctant to let them put up posters describing the lost cat, Wysotski said.
"It was like pulling teeth even to be allowed to put up a flier. They said the paper would be caught in the jet propellers " he told ABCNEWS.com. "To get any cooperation, even, you had to threaten and fight."
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