Legal News

Animal Rights Groups Getting Clever With the Law

By Ashby Jones

Any plaintiffs’ lawyers out there looking for that extra kick, that little something to boost “the inventory” (as it’s sometimes called), fill the pipeline of cases?

Well, you might just take a page from the book of animal-rights groups, which are aggressively stepping up their legal tactics and getting clever and creative with their use of the law. Click here for a story out Friday by the WSJ’s Dionne Searcey.

Searcey’s story leads with a case involving sheep with the bends. Yup, you read that right — sheep with the bends.

It started when prosecutors in Madison, Wis., declined to pursue University of Wisconsin officials and researchers whose test subjects, three sheep, inadvertently died of the bends during U.S. Navy-financed experiments aimed at helping submariners.

Two animal-rights groups, Alliance for Animals and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, seized on a little-invoked state law to aid their case. The law allows citizens to petition a judge to order prosecutions when there’s probable cause to believe a law has been violated and when a district attorney has refused to issue a complaint.

At a hearing Thursday, an attorney for the animal groups asked a Wisconsin judge to order a special prosecutor to file civil charges against the university employees for killing animals using decompression. The judge said she would issue a ruling later this month.

In other states, lawyers have used foreclosure laws to secure liens on horses, dogs and other pets of people charged with abuse to seize the animals.

Because pets are considered property, the lawyers, working with local shelters can secure a lien equal to the cost of treating or boarding the abused animals and then auction them off for the price of the lien. The shelters so far have been the only bidders, allowing them to take possession of the animals and then offer up the pets for adoption.

Lori Kettler, senior counsel for PETA, said in the 1990s animal activists in Virginia used local codes regulating boxing matches-that required participants to have no facial hair and to wear regulation boots-to halt a Kangaroo boxing event.

“These laws were not written with animals in mind but we’re using them to protect animals,” said Lisa Franzetta, a spokeswoman for the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 02, 2010 (boomark / email).