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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?
(Score: 1) by Oligonicella on Monday April 28 2014, @03:15PM
Chimps have also viciously and without provocation attacked, maimed, disfigured and killed humans. They should then be charged and perhaps executed for their crimes? I'm sure Wise and troop would raise strident voices against that.
And let's be clear. Tommy didn't sue, other sued on his behalf. This is more similar to a class action suit.
I happen to think people abusing animals like this should be prosecuted, but to grant legal equivalence to a human is a very bad step. End it where? Earthworms? Laughable, but similar things have been done by the EPA to protect minnows.