LAKE CHARLES, La. (Legal Newsline) – A Louisiana man who took a stray cat to a state-run vet’s office may have had to deal with the death of the animal but his dispute with the bill will have state officials thinking twice about filing collections lawsuits.
The Louisiana State University Veterinarian Teaching Hospital is sanctioned $20,000 in attorneys fees for suing Robert Johnson, the state’s Third Circuit Court of Appeal ruled this month. Its ruling affirms Judge Kerry Lyndon Spruill, of the Avoyelles Parish court.
It took nearly eight years for LSU to sue Johnson for what it claimed was an unpaid amount on the treatment of stray cat Hemi in 2011.
Johnson took Hemi to the LSU Veterinary Hospital on December 2011 on referral from his local vet. He signed a client fee estimate form and made a $1,000 deposit on an estimate of $1,000 to $2,000.
Treatment for Hemi ensued, which included a hospitalization. Previous testing was possibly incorrect, LSU told Johnson, and he wouldn’t be charged for additional testing.
LSU said Hemi required a surgical procedure but the cat died in January 2012 before it could be performed.
LSU’s bill was “well above” the $2,000 estimate and Johnson was charged for the new testing, the decision authored by Sharon Wilson said. Johnson made protest payments of $100 per month, from November 2012 to September 2014.
In 2016, the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office attempted to recover even more, demanding $1,243.88. It then represented LSU in a collections lawsuit filed in 2019.
Johnson countered that he’d given the vet $4,000 even though he had only signed an estimate form to pay up to $2,000. He said he was owed the difference then hit LSU with a motion for sanctions, calling its lawsuit frivolous.
Two courts have now agreed with Johnson and ordered LSU to pay his lawyers for him. It took well past the three-year statute of limitations for the State to file its lawsuit, courts ruled in rejecting the State’s argument a 10-year window applied.
“An attorney must make an objectively reasonable inquiry into the facts and law before filing a pleading. Subjective good faith will not satisfy the duty of reasonable inquiry,” Judge Wilson wrote.
“The trial court determined that the original petition, and documents attached thereto by LSU, readily confirm that the judgment sought against Mr. Johnson was prescribed under the three-year prescriptive period for open accounts…
“Furthermore, the trial court held that the argument for the longer prescriptive period of La.R.S. 9:5701 was specious given that it was readily apparent from records in LSU’s possession that they could not prove a valid debt through a legally enforceable writing. Given these facts, LSU failed to certify a claim warranted by existing law or a non-frivolous argument for the extension of existing law.”