Bad News for NZ Veterinary Teaching Hospital Staff Who Harm Our Pets: The Institutional Legal Shield Has A Crack Right Down the Middle

Reader Feedback About New Zealand's 'Premier' Veterinary 'Teaching' Institution:
‘Imagine If These Massey "Vets" Had Become Doctors’  . . . And Some VERY Bad News for those ‘Vets’ (And Those Who Aren’t Licensed, Too)

(By Jordan Kelly, IIIVE Executive Director . . . and Pet Parent of Harry Kelly (above), a private fee-paying patient who was catastrophically overdosed by staff at Massey University's Companion Animal 'Hospital', with a contraindicated sedative, tortured, abused, filmed by students on cell phones during that abuse, and later presented under the guise of an unexplained 'neurological event' with a demand that he be immediately "euthonased". Full article series here.)

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'(I knew) a human doctor of medicine who also used to be a vet . . . and when I hear stories like this, I think, "Imagine if these people (had) become doctors, rather than vets . . ." ' 

- Excerpt from reader's feedback email

This particularly thought-provoking comment is excerpted from one reader’s larger feedback email received this week.

It represents a piece of logic I pointed out in one of the early articles in this ongoing series –  The Killing of Harry Kelly  – about the infamous New Zealand veterinary "teaching" facility, Massey University "Companion Animal Hospital", and its staff's  torture, abuse and fraudulently coerced killing of my precious, vibrant and deeply loved little papillon, Harry. 

That is, literally, if what was done to this animal species patient had been an act (or, more accurately, a series of acts) committed in a hospital for humans, it would without question be the subject of a murder inquiry if discovered.

(Readers following my ongoing investigation will know that Harry was entrusted into this facility’s "care" on the night of Sunday, November 30 last year for a simple rehydration procedure after the late November heat had finally gotten to both him and to me during a horrible two weeks in a small sleeper van . . . a situation he and I had been forced into when an insurance repair job on my property went badly pear-shaped. Readers coming in cold to this series of articles, can  find the full collection here.)

So this reader’s particularly thought-provoking observation – excerpted from his more extensive feedback email – really hit home for me . . . before continuing on, as it very relevantly did, with observations about institutional accountability, and the accountability of the individuals that operate within them. Or rather, lack thereof, in both contexts.

The reader – actually someone I've interviewed previously – wrote, as his observations relate to the veterinary sector:

"It didn't surprise me that they don't have any formal complaints procedure. That's one way to keep (their) mistakes under wraps. I think vets have it too easy, obviously the patient can't complain for themselves and we too often put blind faith in them . . . I've heard too many stories of people who have questions about the treatment of their animals but no one who can answer them. As in, the vets won't criticise each other, probably for fear of future employment prospects being quashed if they do so."

The reader who wrote that is Graeme Axford. And when it comes to calling out and taking to task powerful government agencies and other institutions funded by the public purse – including those gone completely rogue (which I would argue is an apt and deserved description of Massey University's Veterinary Teaching Hospital aka "Companion Animal Hospital") – Axford has written the book on it. Literally. Now, in fact, he's written his second and even more enlightening book on it. 

And his targets aren't impressed.

On the note of not impressed, let me share with readers who else isn't impressed . . . if I'm right that some "reader feedback" from three “brave” anonymous senders this past week or so originated from the keyboards of Massey staff / insiders (one, in my view, couldn't have originated from any other source, and the other two bear the telltale hallmarks of the low-grade intellect I have previously observed regarding a concerningly large percentage of the staff I’ve dealt with there and which is evident in both their now revealed and subsequent behaviours).

All were also childishly insulting. All were cryptic. One was from “Hugh Janus” – a recognised internet prank name (say it aloud). All had in common, the evasion of any substance. And I firmly believe that all originated out of the fear generated within Massey’s staff circles by my most recent article, which has accepted the otherwise- collusive Veterinary Council of New Zealand’s (VCNZ) Deputy Registrar Liam Shields’s offer to secure the names of the personnel that Massey has redacted from Harry’s records and also the other names that I seek . . . albeit Shields’s offer is three months late and definitely not made with any degree of enthusiasm.

One (or rather, two, because these reader “feedback” emails came from the same unnamed person, the second as a frantically added PS) arrived in at 9.56pm on Sunday, March 29 . . . just minutes after I had published the above-mentioned article i.e. Yes, Please, VCNZ's Liam Shields, I WILL Have the Names You Have Been Obligated to Extract from Massey for the PAST THREE MONTHS.

His/her/its frantic "PS" addition arrived in at 10.01pm.

Classic monitoring, panicked response, and transparent gaslighting and intimidation strategy behaviour in full flight.

And all appeared very, very rattled by that most recent article . . . obvious also by the fact that the only other reader feedback I’ve had up to that point had been either emails of support or emails regarding other (very) bad experiences at this Massey facility.

I’ll write more about these in a forthcoming article. Stay tuned.

So why were these Massey insiders (again, as I believe they so obviously are i.e. with one hinting at knowledge they had regarding the roles of two specific staff members) so rattled?

Because up until now, they've been coddled by Massey's in-house and external legal counsel into a false sense of institutionally-protected legal security.

What none of them, I believe, has ever realised is the inherent errancy lurking inconveniently behind their assumptions.

Those inherently errant assumptions being that:

(a) Massey and its access to the public purse will prevent any private pet owner client from ever going up against them in the courts, and

(b) even if any pet owner did, they (Massey staff), as individuals, are completely insulated by the institution of which they are "just an employee".

I have news for them. None of it good. For them, at least.

News that – if they're reading this as I publish it, as Massey and its external legal counsel seem always to be (and goodness knows what that's doing to Massey's budget, which would be far more productively invested in educating their own veterinary staff, most especially in their obligations around ethics) – will flag very clearly to them that they're in for an uncomfortable time up ahead.

The news is this:

They can – and, in fact, they WILL – be held accountable, at the individual level.

Here is how. And here is why it is not only possible, but how the mechanisms are already established in New Zealand law.

Personal & Individual Accountability: Misfeasance in Public Office

Misfeasance in public office is a tort established in New Zealand common law – confirmed in Garrett v Attorney-General (1997) – that holds individuals exercising public functions personally liable in their own name, not their employer's.

It applies where a person exercising a public function, acting in that capacity, either deliberately acts unlawfully, or acts with reckless indifference as to whether their conduct is lawful and whether it will cause harm to the party or parties affected.

In plain terms: It's the legal mechanism that removes the institutional shield and places personal liability on the individual who made the decision.

Now, some of those reading this will be thinking: "I'm not a public official. I'm just a vet / clinic staff / support staff. I work at a university. That doesn't apply to me."

More bad news for more Massey staff.

Massey University is a Crown-funded institution operating under the Education and Training Act 2020. Its Veterinary Teaching Hospital exercises statutory functions under legislation governing veterinary education and practice in New Zealand.

The staff who work within it - including those who administer drugs, make clinical decisions, authorise procedures, and manage records (big shout-out there to Practice Manager Pauline Nijman) - are exercising public functions in the legal sense that matters. Not because of their job title. Because of the nature of the function they are performing and the institution within which they perform it.

The elements that must be shown are straightforward: A person exercising a public function. Who knew of their obligation to the person (and/or animal) they were dealing with. Who proceeded regardless, in a manner likely to cause harm.

Unlike ordinary negligence – where damages are limited to what was actually lost – misfeasance in public office can attract exemplary damages. Damages designed not merely to compensate the victim, but to punish the wrongdoer and deter others. This is what gives the tort its real teeth.

Now consider who, in the Massey situation, might meet the above test.

Hmm . . . let us consider the question carefully, and with the benefit of the extensive legal and forensic detail with which I have thus far documented so many of the elements of the  Killing of Harry Kelly matter. And that I will continue on with my detailed coverage of (much to the likely terror and certainly chagrin of the afore-mentioned brave anonymous keyboard warriors).

For Those Who Like A Cliffhanger Ending

Actually no . . . let me end this article in true cliffhanger style.

Let me let those that know damn well they meet those criteria sweat for another few days before I rub their nose in what I’ve got to rub their noses in, and what I absolutely WILL be rubbing their noses in, in a court of law.
 
That day will be a day none of them - in all their unspeakably cruel and low-intellect arrogance - ever thought they’d face.

A day that, even if the notion had crossed their mind, of their malpractice and misfeasance ever being exposed, they assumed they’d be fully protected from by Massey’s publicly-funded, big-budget, top-shelf legal counsel-provided institutional shield.
 
I wish I was a fly on the wall tonight as I hit Publish on this latest upload so I can see their respective faces when they realise that their assumed legal shield has a crack right down the middle of it. And, in due course (one of Massey’s favorite terms), I’m about to drive right through it.

Oh, and my own PS: 

To the anon’s and any others tempted to shore up their efforts. You don’t threaten me. And you don’t intimidate me. Well, you try, I suppose. But as you can see, you have quite the opposite effect of deterring me or shutting me down.

Because exposing what you’re doing to our pets is far too important to me and to many others to ever let that (shutting me down or shutting me up, that is) happen.

FAR. TOO. IMPORTANT.