If you took it to court, and won, you'd most likely end up winning tyhe money spent back. Plus that of, as someone else said, the pain and suffering. What they did was wrong. I am so careful with vets now. A lot of them are out just to milk as much money as they can out of you. Your poor baby. :(

There are times when we have to stop and re-think what the goal is..It does not seem to be money that is driving you but the protection of any other baby to whom this might happen. I am saying this because I think you have accomplished the very thing that you set out to do-assure that your baby's death was not in vain. The money is a big issue and you might spend more and have the same outcome.
Many times just going thru all that you have are what will help assure that this does not happen to another baby. That vet will never look at another puppy without remembering Chewy and what happened. He will think more than twice before doing such procedures on another little one.
I was criticized by a person who was told that I refused that procedure for my heart of heart Jesse who died last winter. My vet was very open and honest about the dangers and I could not take the chance. It sounds as if your vet was not as forthright as he/she should have been.

Thanks
 

Thanks everyone for your help. There were a couple who said that they thought the vet had written off the the bills and that is not true. We are still trying to pay off the $4000 in debt it cost to try and save him from what they did to him. Those costs don't even cover the additional $1200 we have spent on a lawyer.

The big problem here is the legal system is not advanced enough yet to hear these type of slam dunk cases. If I had taken my baby into a doctor and this had happened I would probably already have seen the doctor admit their mistake and have seen them pay the required restitution. Instead since this is a dog there are still people out there who think that Dogs are nothing more than a piece of property and therefore if you have the unlucky event of running into a judge or jury who are animal haters (I would think animal lovers are even people who are indifferent would see things from our point of views) they cannot understand why we would be so angry that our first puppy at such a young age.

Everyone had some great advice and I think that we might be more successfull in getting our message across by letting their customer base know what kind of veterinarians they bring their pets too. These people are no better than the mechanics who take advantage of uninformed people and force them to pay for repairs that are not necessary. The only problem in this case is if you screw up a car you can always buy a new one...kind of hard to find a puppy that provides the same companionship as your first one. Even our new puppy Pudgy has a completely different personality, that isn't necessarily worse but is just different.

I will keep everyone updated, thanks again.