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An Edmonton veterinarian previously found guilty of professional misconduct has been cleared by the profession’s governing body in an unrelated case that has prompted a lawsuit.
Dr. Ignacio Tan faced 11 allegations made by the owner of a cat who claimed to have brought it to an Edmonton-area animal hospital for treatment in August of 2020.
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The owner testified before a three-person tribunal panel from the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association (ABVMA) that she dropped the cat off at the clinic and received a phone call from a hospital employee shortly thereafter telling her the animal had a suspected heart murmur.
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Four days later, the cat began vomiting, prompting the owner to call the clinic seeking advice.
Five days after that, the cat was found dead and its owner noticed that other cats in her home had also started to become ill, one of which later tested positive for feline panleukopenia, a highly contagious and often fatal viral disease.
The owner suspected her cat caught the disease at Tan’s clinic, and she eventually launched a civil case in the Alberta Court of Justice seeking $50,000 in damages. That litigation is ongoing, according to the ABVMA tribunal’s ruling.
But the tribunal has ruled it could not establish that the cat had actually been in Tan’s care.
“The hearing tribunal concludes that it is more likely than not that (the cat) did not attend at (the animal hospital) at any time.”
The panel members also found it was not possible to determine if the cat had contracted the disease at the animal hospital.
“It is generally accepted that feline parvovirus is considered to be everywhere in the environment where cats exist,” the ruling reads.
“Given the ubiquitous and persistent nature of the virus, an assumption that any given cat contracted the disease from a specific source must be treated as conjecture in the absence of at least strong circumstantial evidence.”
In 2021, Tan was found guilty by the ABVMA of professional misconduct following a complaint four years earlier that he had failed to properly examine a dog before operating on it.
He fought that decision to the Alberta Court of Appeal who upheld the ABVMA’s ruling in June of 2022.
His name is not listed under as among the ABVMA’s suspended or cancelled members, though he was limited from performing certain types of surgeries as agreed to in a 2019 undertaking.
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