Legal Commentary

A couple years ago in this space, I wrote about the now-defunct historical practice of haling non-human animals into court for offenses as varied as destroying crops, attacking humans, and even (ew) adultery. This practice raised lots of interesting questions about legal status, but was mostly a historical footnote, and I figured that the practice of suing non-humans (aside from rights-bearing legal fictions like corporations) was more or less defunct. Turns out, not so much. Today, I ran across this news item about a pending case in Saudi Arabia in which a family filed suit against a genie that has allegedly been harassing them for a couple years (making creepy noises, leaving threatening voicemails, throwing rocks, etc.).

The mind boggles at the legal difficulties raised by the case. How will the family serve process on the genie? If the genie fails to show up in court, and the family gets a default judgment, how will they collect? (Presumably the genie can use his magical powers to conjure up plenty of cash to satisfy the judgment.) Or does the suit seek injunctive relief? This case represents good news for legal academics, too. The field of genie law is significantly under-written (no articles on Westlaw based on a very cursory search), so the lawsuit should provide lots of fodder for novel scholarship.