Posts Tagged ‘animals’

U.K.: Great moments in immigration law

Telegraph:

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruled that sending the Bolivian man back to his homeland would breach his human rights because he was entitled to a “private and family life”, and joint ownership of a pet was evidence that he was fully settled in this country. …

The Bolivian’s identity has not been disclosed and even the name of the pet cat was blanked out in official court papers to protect its privacy.

Delivering her decision on the case, which is thought to have cost the taxpayer several thousand pounds, Judith Gleeson, a senior immigration judge, joked in the official written ruling that the cat “need no longer fear having to adapt to Bolivian mice”. …

More: Rougblog (“We are all familiar with the term “anchor baby,” but the “anchor cat” is a new concept for me.”)

Horse injury suit will discourage charity programs

Work To Ride Inc. is a celebrated philanthropic program in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park meant to give at-risk urban kids experience working with horses. Now a jury has awarded $2.36 million against the program to a boy whose jaw was broken when a horse kicked him in the face while being loaded into a trailer. There was some dispute over the circumstances:

Both the plaintiffs and defense papers said that [plaintiff] Williams hit the horse with a stick on the hindquarters and the horse kicked Williams in the face after being hit with the stick. But the plaintiffs said Williams was asked by [program employee] Shuler to use the stick on the horse’s hindquarters to get the horse to go onto the trailer. And the defense said that Williams hit the horse without any instruction from Shuler, Shuler commanded Williams to not hit the horse and Williams then hit the horse a second time in defiance of Shuler’s command.

The jury attributed 10 percent of the negligent responsibility to Williams, who was 12 at the time of the accident, and 90 percent to Work To Ride. Work To Ride’s insurance limit is $1 million, and plaintiffs are talking about going after its insurer, Lloyds, for the remainder on a bad faith theory. [Amaris Elliott-Engel, Legal Intelligencer]

Zoo fall blamed on splashy dolphins

The Chicago Zoological Society and Brookfield Zoo, according to Allecyn Edwards’ suit, “recklessly and willfully trained and encouraged the dolphins to throw water at the spectators in the stands making the floor wet and slippery,” among other derelictions. [Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, Riverside/Brookfield Landmark] More: Lowering the Bar (“based on my extensive Discovery Channel research, most dolphins live in water, either a pool of it or, in some extreme cases, an entire ocean. It appears to be not uncommon for surfaces near these bodies of water to become wet and slippery.”)