Posts Tagged ‘animal rights’

Litigious animal rightsers

San Antonio:

An animal rights group has filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven chimpanzees and two monkeys, claiming the primates are not properly cared for at a Leon Springs sanctuary.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants a state district judge in Bexar County to appoint a guardian to oversee more than $235,000 provided for the animals’ care at Primarily Primates.

(“PETA Sues Local Primate Sanctuary “, KSAT, May 8)(via Strange in San Antonio).

Meanwhile, Dan McLaughlin at Baseball Crank reports (Apr. 19) on a Ninth Circuit decision (PDF) which “permitted an animal rights activist’s qui tam suit to go forward under the False Claims Act against a cancer researcher, principally on the theory that the researcher misrepresented the efficacy of his research.” McLaughlin does not pass judgment on whether the research project in question was a good use of public funds:

But I do know that allowing animal rights zealots an opening to use private litigation to harass medical researchers is a horrifying development. You will note, if you review the allegations on pages 6-7 of the slip opinion, that there are no allegations of the kind of things the False Claims Act is intended to protect against, i.e., personal enrichment, bill padding, and/or cost overruns by government contractors. Instead, there are a series of charges mainly relating to the medical merits of the research – a subject that will often be difficult for a judge without medical expertise to resolve on a motion to dismiss (where you assume the truth of the plaintiff’s allegations) or even on summary judgment (where the defendant only wins if it can show that there are no material factual disputes). Result: protracted and expensive litigation whenever anti-animal-research fanatics can gin up a factual dispute and hire an expert to bicker over anything said in a research application, with the attendant chilling effect on life-saving research. Indeed, from the docket numbers on the caption it appears that this particular case has already dragged on for five years just on the dispute over the legal merits.

Of course, harassment via legal process may compare favorably with some of the ways animal rights zealots have been known to harass researchers.

UK animal cruelty prosecution

Another animal rights story from Britain: “A policeman who put an injured cat out of its misery after it had been run over was dragged through the courts by the RSPCA in a case that has cost £50,000.” The High Court finally threw out the case against Jonathan Bell, who had been the target of a two-year campaign of prosecution by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. (Ben Leapman and Matthew Chapman, “Two years and £50,000 later, ordeal of policeman who put dying cat out of its misery is finally over”, Daily Telegraph, Apr. 9).

Our Furry Friends Plaintiffs

Abstract for a new paper on SSRN:

This article seeks to explore a simple but profound question: how should our legal system deal with the claims of animals for protection against harms inflicted by humans? […] This article examines how the legal system presently balances such interests and how common law judges could expand, in a forthright manner, the consideration of animals’ interests. Finally, this article will suggest a more expansive consideration of animals’ interests through the adoption of a new tort: intentional interference with a fundamental interest of an animal.

(David S. Favre, “Judicial Recognition of the Interests of Animals – A New Tort”, 2005 Mich. St. L. Rev. 333 (Summer 2005)). Who says we already have too many lawsuits? If there ever is a class action on behalf of the Bovine-American community over McDonald’s hamburgers, it can perhaps be covered in the next edition of another new paper on SSRN, Howard Wasserman’s “Fast Food Justice.”

Earlier Overlawyered coverage: Oct. 21 and our animal rights archive.

Lawyers target milk

Jonathan Turley is fond of claiming (without any real basis) that litigation reform advocates make up stories to promote tort reform. The reality is that the plaintiffs’ bar provides us with stories far more entertaining than any fictional Winnebago lawsuit.

Remember the day of June 21, 2005, because that’s the day that a sufficient number of the world’s problems were solved that a “public-interest group” has nothing better to do than to troll for plaintiffs to sue the dairy industry for not putting warning labels on milk about lactose intolerance. This is yet another publicity stunt of Dan Kinburn and the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, over 95% of whom are not physicians; last time they asked for publicity, we gave it to them. The American Medical Association has called PCRM a “fringe organization” that uses “unethical tactics” and is “interested in perverting medical science.” (via Taylor, who is waiting for vegetarians to sue over beef commercials)

New post category: “Eat, Drink and Be Merry”

It’s been a while since we’ve added any new topical categories, so we’ve just created one that’s been overdue: Eat Drink and Be Merry, covering lawsuits over bacon cheeseburgers and obesity, booze sales, foreign objects that turn up in the chili or bottled water, calorie-labeling goofs, and, of course, hot coffee spills. We might throw in a few related stories about claims of “addictive” entertainment, too. Several of these topics are obviously closely related to the themes of our ever-popular personal responsibility subpage, which will remain unchanged.

A word about our topical pages (which are a great way to use the site for research, or just browse what we’ve published on a topic you find of interest): our subpage on product liability is a catch-all for cases in that category that don’t fit into the more specific pages covering guns, tobacco, cars, aircraft, microchips, and so forth (and now food and drink). If you’re interested in product liability as a general subject, you should consider visiting these other pages too. And our subpage on environmental law ranges somewhat afield to take in topics that include zoning, landmark preservation, mold claims and (always a favorite) animal rights. The full list of topics can be found along the right column of Overlawyered’s front page, just below the list of archives arranged by month.

Update: PETA vs. “Happy Cows” ads

Animal-rights extremist group PETA has failed in its effort to invoke California’s s. 17200 unfair-practices act to suppress a state advertising campaign characterizing California dairy products as coming from “happy cows”. Without comment, the state Supreme Court has denied review of an appeals court decision throwing out the lawsuit, which had held that official government activity (in this case that of the state’s farmer-funded milk advisory board) is not covered by the statute (see Nov. 30, 2004 and Jan. 16, 2005). (Bob Egelko, “State justices refuse PETA a hearing on the life of cows”, San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 21).

U.K.: Labour backs off ban on fairground goldfish

Fearing ridicule, the Blair government has backed off a clause of an animal welfare bill “which would have outlawed the use of any animal as a competition prize”, and which was largely aimed at the popular practice of awarding a goldfish in a plastic bag as a prize at carnivals. “The scientific jury is still out on fish stress, with one study suggesting goldfish never get bored because their memories are too short to recall what it was they might have been bored about.” (Martin Wainwright, “Labour gets cold feet over ban on fairground goldfish”, The Guardian, Jan. 15).