Veterinary malpractice claim

The case originates from a dental procedure performed by Dr D.P. on an elderly dog — referred to in the proceedings only as M. — who was already suffering from serious pre-existing conditions.

During the operation, carried out under general anaesthesia between October and November 2017, the animal developed severe haemorrhaging requiring a blood transfusion and further surgical intervention; M. subsequently died from hypovolaemic shock.

The owners sued the vet seeking:

• rescission of the service contract;
• compensation for economic loss (veterinary fees paid);
• compensation for non-economic (moral) damages arising from the animal's suffering and from their own emotional distress.

The court of first instance dismissed all claims. The Florence Court of Appeal, Fourth Civil Section, hearing the case under the new "Cartabia" civil procedure rules (paper hearing of 9 July 2026 pursuant to Art. 127-ter c.p.c.), reversed the decision entirely.

Who May Sue: The Non-Owner Cohabitant Has Standing

The first and most significant legal question was whether Ms L., who shared her life with the dog but was not the registered owner, had standing to bring the claim. The defendant argued that, as a res (chattel), only the legal owner could claim for loss or damage to an animal. The Court rejected this view emphatically, describing it as «an obsolete conception, long since superseded».

The reasoning rests on a two-decade legislative evolution that has progressively emancipated companion animals from the category of mere property:

• Law No. 281 of 14 August 1991 — framework law on companion animals and stray prevention;
• Law No. 189 of 20 July 2004 — introduction into the Criminal Code of Title IX-bis (Arts. 544-bis et seq.), creating the offences of killing and mistreating animals;
• Art. 1138, final paragraph, of the Civil Code — prohibition on condominium rules that ban pets;
• European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, ratified by Italy with Law No. 201 of 4 November 2010, as recently amended by Law No. 82 of 6 June 2025.

This normative corpus demonstrates that Italian law now treats the human-animal bond as a legally relevant affective relationship. The Court aligned itself with the approach already adopted by the Tribunal of Prato (judgment 25 January 2025, No. 51), holding that any member of the household with whom the animal lived may claim damages, provided they prove the existence of the affective bond — for example through photographic or other documentary evidence of shared daily life.

What Was Actually Being Litigated: Suffering, Not Death

A technically decisive point concerns the precise scope of the claim. The appellants stated explicitly in their final submissions that «the subject-matter of the proceedings relates to the care given and the omissions of Dr D.P., NOT the death», identifying the damage as «the hours during which M. suffered through the fault, and only the fault, of her vet».

This framing proved crucial because the court-appointed veterinary expert (CTU) had excluded the vet's liability for the death itself, attributing it to the animal's pre-existing conditions and to «a combination of two concurrently critical events» — severe anaemia and haemodynamic bleeding — which would have been difficult to manage even in ideal circumstances.

Having fixed the object of the claim, the Court then examined whether the vet had caused unnecessary suffering or failed to mitigate it. The veterinary expert's report documented multiple departures from best practice:

• failure to carry out pre-operative blood tests on an elderly, fragile patient (full blood count, biochemical profile, coagulation screen, radiological assessment);
• absence of a written informed consent form;
• tooth extraction technique «diverging from that described in the most modern veterinary dental literature»;
• failure to administer analgesics and sedatives;
• blood transfusion performed without cross-compatibility testing.

Non-Economic Damages for the Owners

On the question of non-economic damages suffered by the owners as a consequence of M.'s suffering, the Court departed from the first-instance medico-legal expert's conclusions, which had characterised the owners' reaction as a mere transient «adjustment disorder» with no causal link to the events in question.

The Florence appellate judges recognised that the constitutional foundation of damages for a pet's loss or suffering — already affirmed by the Tribunal of Prato (No. 51/2025) — rests on the contribution that the relationship with an animal makes to the development of the human personality. When emotional distress exceeds the threshold of ordinary tolerance and affects the psychological or physical equilibrium of the claimant, the damage is compensable. The animal is no longer a chattel; it is a sentient being whose welfare generates legally enforceable consequences for those who share their lives with it.

The "Extended" Affective Bond: Systematic Context with Wrongful Death Damages

The ruling on the non-owner cohabitant's standing is not an isolated decision. It fits coherently within a body of case law that the Italian Court of Cassation has steadily developed in the domain of compensation for more distant relatives and non-cohabiting loved ones.

The Third Civil Section of the Supreme Court held, in judgment No. 22397 of 15 July 2022 and subsequently confirmed in orders No. 17208 of 26 June 2025 and No. 25200 of 19 September 2024, that iure proprio non-economic damages for loss of or injury to an affective relationship do not require cohabitation between the claimant and the primary victim — cohabitation «not constituting a minimum requirement for the relationship to exist» — but only require proof of a genuine and consistent bond, even in the case of grandchildren claiming for the loss of a grandparent. The constitutional foundation of this approach lies in Art. 29 of the Italian Constitution, which refers to the family as a «natural society» in its broadest sense.

The Court of Cassation elaborated further — in order No. 11201 of 26 April 2026 — that even the grandparent-grandchild relationship gives rise to a presumption of non-economic prejudice, rebuttable only by the opposing party, thereby elevating the stable affective relationship to an autonomous constitutive element of the damages claim. Finally, in order No. 15146 of 20 May 2026, the Third Section reaffirmed that iure proprio damages encompass not only the loss of life but also the harm caused by witnessing a loved one's suffering before death — the anguish experienced by relatives during the illness or pain of a dear one — as an autonomous compensable item, «identical in nature but different in its object».

It is precisely in this framework that the Florence ruling sits: recognising the non-owner cohabitant's right to damages for the hours of M.'s suffering means applying to the human-animal bond the same logic the Supreme Court has long applied to human relationships. What matters is not the formal legal label of the tie, but the real, proven depth of the affection that sustains it.

6. Comparative Law: How the United States Handles Pet Bereavement Damages

The Italian approach is not without parallel in the common law world, though the evolution in the United States has followed a markedly different — and in some respects slower — trajectory.

Under the traditional US rule, still dominant in the majority of states, companion animals are classified as personal property, and damages for their death or injury are capped at fair market value — typically a negligible sum for a mixed-breed rescue dog. This so-called market value or property rule, rooted in nineteenth-century common law, has long been the target of academic criticism and reform advocacy. Courts applying it have routinely denied recovery for emotional distress arising from the loss of a pet, on the grounds that loss of companionship damages are unavailable for personal property.

A legislative breakthrough came in Tennessee in 2023, which became the first US state to enact a statute expressly permitting recovery of non-economic damages — specifically loss of companionship — for the negligent injury or death of a companion animal, subject to a statutory cap of USD 5,000 for ordinary negligence and USD 25,000 for gross negligence or intentional conduct. Analogous bills have been introduced in Illinois, New York and California, reflecting a growing legislative consensus that the emotional bond between a person and their pet is a legally cognisable interest deserving protection beyond the animal's replacement cost.

On the veterinary malpractice front, US courts generally apply the same standard of care analysis used in human medical malpractice: the vet must exercise the degree of care and skill ordinarily possessed by members of the profession in good standing. Where that standard is breached and causes harm, economic damages (emergency treatment costs, loss of the animal's market value) are recoverable. Non-economic damages, however, remain the exception rather than the rule and, outside Tennessee-style statutes, are rarely awarded. Punitive damages — unavailable in the Italian civil system — may in principle be recovered in the US for wilful or reckless veterinary misconduct, though they are rarely granted in practice.

The point of convergence between the Italian and American systems is therefore ideological rather than technical: both legal cultures are grappling, at different speeds and through different instruments, with the same fundamental question — whether the law should recognise the human-animal affective bond as a value worthy of genuine, not merely symbolic, legal protection. Italy, through the judicial evolution culminating in the Florence ruling, appears to have taken a more decisive step in that direction than most US jurisdictions, albeit without the express legislative mandate that Tennessee has now provided.

Outcome and Costs

The Florence Court of Appeal allowed all of the appellants' claims: rescission of the contract, economic damages, and non-economic damages. The only claim rejected was the publication of the judgment under Art. 120 c.p.c., deemed ancillary and not capable of constituting even partial defeat for the appellants, in line with the consolidated approach of the Court of Cassation (cf. Cass. S.U. No. 32061 of 31 October 2022).

Costs of both proceedings were charged entirely to Dr D.P., assessed under Ministerial Decree No. 55 of 10 March 2014 (as amended by M.D. No. 147/2022):

• first instance: € 6,600.10;
• second instance: € 7,551.70

with a 30% uplift applied once, as requested by the appellants under Art. 4(2) of M.D. No. 55/2014. The costs of both the first- and second-instance veterinary expert reports were definitively charged to the defendant.

Systematic Significance: Three Operative Principles

The Florence Court of Appeal judgment No. 2634/2026 consolidates three principles of immediate practical relevance:

1. Affective bond, not ownership, confers standing. Any person who shared genuine daily life with a companion animal may bring a damages claim for the animal's suffering or death caused by professional negligence, irrespective of formal ownership.

2. Suffering is compensable independently of death. Where veterinary malpractice causes unnecessary pain to the animal without causing or materially contributing to its death, the resulting non-economic damages — borne both by the animal and by its human companions — are fully recoverable.

3. The presumption of prejudice extends to non-nuclear bonds. Consistent with the Supreme Court's evolving approach to wrongful death damages for distant relatives, any stable and proven affective relationship — whether between humans, or between a human and an animal — may give rise to a presumption of non-economic harm, rebuttable only by the opposing party.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For individual legal matters, consult a qualified professional.