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Chicago Tribune
July 16, 2002 Tuesday
HEADLINE: IS YOUR DOG YOUR PROPERTY?
Barking up the wrong legal tree
BYLINE: By Steven Zak. Steven Zak is an attorney in Sunland, Calif.,
who
has written extensively about ethics and animals.
BODY:
Do you "own" your pet or are you his or her "guardian"? In Los Angeles,
the
Animal Services Commission has decided it's the latter. So now, if you
adopt an animal from a city shelter there or apply for a pet license
you'll
be referred to not as an owner but as a guardian. Which is perfectly
intuitive: You own a sofa. You care for a dog.
For something so in line with common sense, the commission's move has
generated a fair amount of, if not controversy, at least skittishness.
Later this month, the commission will decide whether to urge the Los
Angeles City Council to implement the policy citywide, and already
opponents are making their reservations heard. Explicit talk about
human
obligations toward animals makes people nervous. We're not entering an
alien world, but people worry. Veterinarians, for instance, wonder: If
animals are even referenced as something more than property, would a
doctor
be required then to take into account a non-human patient's needs even
if
these were in conflict with the express wishes of the animal's
guardian?
Relax. That's always been a possibility. Suppose a man tells a vet to
cut
off his dog's legs for the amusement of house guests. Would the doctor
do
it since the man is, after all, the animal's "owner"? Not likely. More
realistically, I've known several vets who'd refuse to dock a dog's
tail
since the procedure isn't medically indicated.
The law, in any case, already recognizes in many ways that an animal is
more than mere "goods." For instance, a vet who fails to conform to
reasonable standards of practice, even on a $2 cat, could face a
malpractice action and even potentially lose his license.
Nonetheless, the president of the American Veterinary Medical Law
Association has expressed the fear that guardianship-talk is a
dangerously
new idea that could lead to "standing" for human advocates to represent
animals in court.
That, he worries, is a slippery slope that could "change the fabric of
our
nation."
If there is a "slippery slope," we've long been on it. In 1641 the
Puritans
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony printed their first legal code, which
contained a prohibition against cruelty to animals. All states have
such
laws, most of which have been around for more than a century.
Prosecutors
already, in effect, advocate for animals in abuse cases, and so, for
that
matter, does a person in a civil suit over harm done to his animal.
Courts and prosecutors don't always afford animal cases much priority,
and
when abusers are convicted in criminal cases they often receive
notoriously
light sentences. But not always.A California man currently faces a
possible
25 years to life for felony animal cruelty after he decapitated his
German
shepherd puppy with swords, knives and shears and pounded a stake into
the
animal's chest. (He wanted to impress his girlfriend.) Having been
twice
convicted of aggravated assault, another felony conviction would be
James
Abernathy's third under the state's three-strikes law, thus allowing a
sentence commensurate with the baseness of the crime and of the man's
own
demonstrated nature.
Try explaining a life sentence in terms of "ownership." The fact that
the
dog "belonged" to Abernathy is no legal defense. Nor would it have
prevented a court from removing the animal from him had it been so
fortunate as to survive, just as a child might be separated from a
violent
parent. For all its shortcomings in protecting animals, the law does
recognize the difference between a dog and a two-by-four.
Guardian-talk,
then, breaks no radical ground.
Los Angeles wouldn't even be the first to take such a step. Six cities
along with the state of Rhode Island already have. I've seen no reports
of
the good life in these places coming to a sudden end. Compared to laws
that
protect wild horses or that save the whales, a city referring to pet
people
as "guardians" rather than "owners" is hardly Earth-shattering.
Still, it's a move in a positive direction. If, in some small way, it
reinforces our evolving sensibilities toward animals, maybe the day is
a
little closer when we'll lock away forever a man who cuts off a live
dog's
head, even without the fortuitous circumstance of two previous strikes.
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Related News Link: Dallas, Texas
http://www.dallasarena.com/v020701cruelty.htm
Dog found improperly euthanized and alive in landfill