Animal Law Fetching More Interest

The prominence of pets is a prime topic in courtrooms, classrooms.

by Sarah Ovaska (McClatchy Newspapers - March 30, 2008)

RALEIGH, N.C. - Fido is getting a new name - several, in fact: plaintiff, trustee, beneficiary and even defendant.

Dogs, cats, and creatures of all sorts are being redefined in an emerging area of legal practice known as animal law. Once considered mere property, animals are being invested with legal standing as they're increasingly being named as partial beneficiaries of estates, subjects of lawsuits and victims of abuse.

As animals rise in the law, so does the profile of lawyers who practice animal law.

Ninety-two of the 196 law schools in the country approved by the American Bar Association now offer courses on animal law, up from the nine that offered classes in 2000, according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

"You're seeing this real snowball effect," said Pamela Alexander, director of the defense fund's animal-law section.

Part of the push has come from animals' rise in prominence in people's lives, with owners routinely spending thousands of dollars to give a cat chemotherapy and sending dogs to day care, therapists and groomers.

Major endowments
High Point publisher Randall B. Terry Jr., whose name will adorn North Carolina State University's new veterinary hospital, left an estimated $1 million to ensure that his six golden retrievers would be cared for after he died in 2004. And New York hotel queen Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her Maltese, Trouble, after her death.

A number of top law schools, including those at Duke, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and Northwestern Universities, bolstered their animal law offerings after each received $1 million from a foundation set up by Bob Barker, former host of The Price is Right and animal philanthropist superstar.

Animal-law disputes still take place in largely uncharted legal territory and revolve around questions about the inherent rights of animals, said William Reppy Jr., a Duke law professor.

Reppy, who started Duke's animal-law clinic, said the newness of the subject area is inviting to activists who see a chance to define new rights, as the areas of civil rights and environmental law have become more established and settled. "Here's an area where it's still bad," Reppy said. "People with an activist mentality can see there's room to do something."

At Duke, an animal clinic puts law students to work on such issues as cruelty and the drafting of animal-control ordinances. But the increased training has outpaced job creation. Reppy said many of his students take conventional jobs in law firms and offer their expertise when animal issues come their way, or they do pro bono work for local humane societies and shelters.

Hoarding cases
North Carolina has landed in the national animal-rights spotlight with two recent hoarding cases that leaned on an unusual state law that allows anyone to sue an animal abuser.

A Sanford couple had 300 animals found in filthy cages in 2005, thought to be the largest animal-hoarding case in the country. The other concerned Janie Conyers, a North Raleigh poodle breeder who had more than 100 dogs and birds seized last fall because of negligence.

In Conyers' case, Animal Legal Defense Fund attorneys flew in from the West Coast, took the lead from the county to sue Conyers, and brokered an agreement that prevents her from owning animals.

Abuse and cruelty cases are the most common, but Reppy said animal law should diversify as courts are asked to consider what to do when pets and their owners come into contact with the law.

The law generally views pets as property in North Carolina, but that idea is slowly changing, said Lee Rosen, a Raleigh divorce attorney. Rosen has seen judges start to deal with pets in the same manner as children in custody disputes.

Rosen tells clients to make sure they're the ones who take the animals to vet appointments and groomers if they're going to fight for custody of a pet. "You want your name to be on those documents," he said.

He and lawyers in his office sometimes wonder whether couples fight over pets just for the sake of fighting. "They say they want the cat, but they're going to use the pet as a negotiating lever," he said.

In one case, Rosen said, a pet sparked a divorce when a man became frustrated at his wife's insistence that their Saint Bernard share their bed. He told her it was him or the dog.

She chose the dog.