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posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 28 2014, @02:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the Better-the-Chimp-than-Corporations dept.

From the article, paraphrased:

When Steven Wise, a 63-year-old legal scholar in the field of animal law, decided to poke around Circle L Trailer Sales to assess the living conditions of the Reindeer living on the company grounds, he was horrified to discover that a former circus chimpanzee named Tommy was forced to live in inhumane conditions:

A rancid milk-musk odor wafted forth and with it the sight of an adult chimpanzee, crouched inside a small steel-mesh cell. Some plastic toys and bits of soiled bedding were strewn behind him. The only visible light emanated from a small portable TV on a stand outside his bars, tuned to what appeared to be a nature show.

Being sufficiently moved by witnessing that heinous crime, Wise and a few cohorts strolled into the Fulton County Courthouse wielding a legal document the likes of which had never been seen in any of the world's courts, a legal package including a detailed account of the "petitioner's" cruel and unusual solitary confinement along with nine affidavits gathered from leading primatologists, underscoring the physical and psychological damages such living conditions endured by a being with such cognitive capability. Tommy would not, however, have anticipated that he was about to make legal history as the first nonhuman primate to ever sue a human captor in an attempt to gain his own freedom.

Granting rights associated with personhood to non-persons has been discussed extensively before, but would be giving personhood to animals be a dangerous slippery-slope? Would be the mark of a more humane and mature society?

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Monday April 28 2014, @03:06PM

    by Sir Garlon (1264) on Monday April 28 2014, @03:06PM (#37193)

    Certainly it's not right to keep any animal under conditions like that, but from reading TFA the main reason the ape was locked up all day was its original owner died and presumably no one else knew how to take care of it. Tragic, but stuff like that happens all the time to exotic animals.

    So Wise decided to go straight to a lawsuit, instead of taking the trouble to find out who Tommy (the chimpanzee)'s new owner was and asking that individual to turn the animal over to a rescue shelter.

    Ironic that this lawyer's name is Wise, because his approach certainly isn't. An appeal to compassion might have worked if he had bothered to try: instead he chooses to invent legal personhood for primates and fight a 10-year court battle. If he had asked nicely then the chimpanzee would probably be out of that dungeon right now.

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    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
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  • (Score: 2) by Techwolf on Monday April 28 2014, @03:12PM

    by Techwolf (87) on Monday April 28 2014, @03:12PM (#37202)

    Unlike me(Yes, I am admitting guilt here), you read TFA and found out the summary was somewhat misleading. Congrats for breaking tradation of posting before reading TFA. :-)

  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:30AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:30AM (#37480) Homepage

    There's money in lawsuits. There's no money in doing the sensible thing here. (See my post above for more on that.)

    And very likely the chimp was locked up because adult chimps are fucking *dangerous*, unpredictably so, even to their 'friends'. It was probably locked up in the only cage that would hold it. (They're also fucking STRONG.)

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    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:53AM

      by Sir Garlon (1264) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:53AM (#37603)

      Regarding how dangerous the adult chimp is, yes, when I said the new owner probably doesn't know how to take care of it, I meant he probably doesn't know how to open the cage door without getting his face bitten off and his arms ripped out of their sockets and used to club him to death.

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      [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.