Jury Awards $1.4M Against Landlord for Stealing Tenant's Cat

An alley cat has turned a man who was down on his luck into a millionaire.

Joshua Smith just snagged a $1.375 million verdict after a jury ruled his landlord catnapped Frank, his Cheshire cat.

The Oregon man found the stray back in 2017, and took him in at a drug recovery residential facility where he was staying. Two years later, Frank turned up missing, and Joshua knew ... his landlord was the culprit. The landlord reportedly confessed and said he gave Frank to his girlfriend to take to a local shelter.

He sued, and it took the jury less than 2 hours to award the whopping verdict. Typically in these cases, the animal owner could only recover the actual value of the cat, which would be next to nothing. Although information isn't available, it would appear the jury awarded punitive damages for willful misconduct.