|
CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
Pets Unite!
You've
Nothing to Lose But Your Leashes
By JOANNE MARINER
Is intentionally killing a dog or cat qualitatively
different than smashing a plate? Pet owners tend to think so.
Yet under current law in most jurisdictions, a pet's value is
calculated like that of any other material object.
If you sue the murderer of your beloved
pooch, you can typically expect to receive the dog's replacement
cost in damages. A recent survey found that two out of three
people say that they wouldn't trade their pets for $1 million.
Yet the legally-recognized value of domestic animals does not
take into account these deep emotional bonds. In the eyes of
the law, in most localities, a dog is more like a plate than
a pal.
This rule may be changing, however. A
quiet revolution is underway, one that would reform the legal
relationship between people and pets, and adjust legal norms
to better accord with moral principles and emotional realities.
Rather than conceiving of pets as material goods, a new set of
laws would recognize them as sentient beings: companions, not
property.
The Traditional
Rule: Pets as Personal Property
Although a few courts have permitted
pet owners to recover for the loss of their pet's companionship
when the pet has been killed or injured, this is not the usual
rule. More commonly, in suits for the negligent or purposeful
infliction of harm to the animal, courts hold that it is the
market value of the animal that counts.
Under this view, the "sentimental
attachment" of an owner to his or her pet has no place in
the computation of damages for the animal's death or injury.
Even the most beloved mutt or tabby is deemed virtually worthless:
rescued from an animal shelter for a nominal fee, they can be
"replaced" at the same expense.
In reaching such conclusions, courts
have repeatedly emphasized that the law categorizes domestic
animals as personal property. Whatever additional value they
may have as companions, from this perspective, is beyond the
purview of the law to address.
At least one court has expressed discomfort
with this legal characterization, even as it barred the owner
of a dog that was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer
from obtaining damages for her emotional distress. "Labeling
a dog 'property,'" the Wisconsin Supreme Court acknowledged
in its 2001 opinion, "fails to describe the value human
beings place upon the companionship that they enjoy with a dog."
(Indeed, as the court might have noted, four out of five pet
owners refer to themselves as the animal's "mom" or
"dad.")
While classifying dogs as property, however
reluctantly, the court seemed eager to distinguish them from
mere objects. "A companion dog is not a fungible item,"
said the court, "equivalent to other items of personal property.
A companion dog is not a living room sofa."
Recent Legal
Changes: Pets as "Companions" and Owners as "Guardians"
The effort to establish a legally meaningful
distinction between pets and living room sofas has recently gained
momentum. Draft legislation was just introduced in Colorado to
change the legal status of dogs and cats from property to companion
animals.
The pending bill would allow Colorado
residents to seek damages for "loss of companionship"
in suits against intentional animal abusers and negligent veterinarians.
It is the latest initiative in a national campaign to reshape
pets' legal status.
Several cities have already passed measures
that characterize pet owners as "guardians," rather
than mere property owners. In San Francisco, for example, the
Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance in January that amended
city and county laws so that they speak of the "owner or
guardian" of animals, as opposed to simply the "owner."
(For good measure, the ordinance also eliminated the adjective
"dumb" from its definition of animal, which previously
referred to "any bird, mammal, reptile, or other dumb creature.")
In passing the ordinance, San Francisco
became the seventh city in the country to codify animal guardian
language. Boulder, Colorado, was the first city to pass such
a measure, in July 2000; later came Berkeley and West Hollywood,
in California, followed by Sherwood, Arkansas, Amherst, Massachusetts,
and Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. In July 2001, Rhode Island became
the first state to include the term "guardian" in its
pet-related legislation.
What These
Laws Mean: Not Just Better Remedies When Animals Suffer Harm
The practical impact of such changes
is to encourage stronger legal remedies in cases of animal abuse
and neglect. But the use of the terms "guardian" and
"companion," as opposed to "owner" and "property,"
has deep moral and philosophical underpinnings.
In Defense of Animals (IDA), the organization
spearheading the guardianship campaign, explains that the terminology
change reflects a conceptual shift: "Being a guardian of
an animal companion signifies a higher level of responsibility,
respect and care for our animal friends. Animals need to be regarded
as more than the material property of an owner. Replacing the
term 'owner' with 'guardian" is a conceptual move toward
recognizing the importance and needs of animals."
The IDA abjures the term "pet,"
preferring the more egalitarian "animal companion"
or "animal friend." And its literature argues that
people should not conceive of themselves as "buying"
animals, but should instead as "adopting" them (making
an implicit analogy to children) or even "rescuing"
them (as with fugitive slaves).
The IDA's stated reasoning differs meaningfully
from that set forth in the pending Colorado legislation. The
draft law, echoing the reasoning of the 2001 Wisconsin court
decision, focuses on the emotional bond that owners feel toward
their pets. As one of its provisions explains, "the death
of a companion dog or cat is psychologically and emotionally
significant and often devastating to the owner."
The real focus of the law's concern is,
in other words, the owner, not the animal. The law simply seeks
to put legal muscle behind the idea that the loss of the animal
may cause emotional distress to the owner.
But the Colorado law's rationale sweeps
rather too broadly. There are many items of personal property
whose loss causes emotional distress that far outweighs their
market value. Consider a family heirloom that has been passed
down through generations, or a watch that belonged to a dead
parent. (At the top of my personal list would be a 1968 Volkswagen
bug of which I'm inordinately fond.) In the end, such protections
need to find their basis in something intrinsic to the animals
themselves.
The Backlash:
Anger Against Animal Rights
The notion that animals have rights,
or should be deemed to have rights, is far from accepted. It
should come as no surprise, therefore, that the move to redefine
pets as companions has drawn fierce opposition from a number
of national pet-owner associations, including the American Kennel
Club. These groups portray the recent legal changes as part of
a dangerous trend toward humanizing animals and annulling the
rights of their owners.
In an editorial siding with this position,
USA Today warned that if society were to recognize that pet are
not property, and that animals have rights, "it would arguably
be impossible to spay or neuter a pet without its permission."
Calling owners "guardians" and pets "wards"
might seem to be "amusing legal concessions to emotional
attachment," the paper stated, but those who favor such
terms ignore their deeply worrisome ramifications.
Such concerns seem wildly overblown.
To recognize that animals have a claim to rights does not, in
itself, indicate how those rights should be defined or how they
might be limited. And already, in the criminal law, society has
implicitly recognized the qualitative difference between animals
and property by enacting animal cruelty laws.
These laws prohibit the torture of domestic
animals, even if the victimized animal belongs to the torturer.
You may rip apart your sofa, if you like, but you are not allowed
to do the same to your dog.
Animals are sentient beings. They feel
pain and, as any pet owner or guardian can attest, they are capable
of emotional attachments. In these ways, they are profoundly
different from property, and similar to humans.
If the ramifications of recognizing that
animals are something more than property are radical, so be it.
Pets of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your leashes.
Joanne Mariner
is a human rights llawyer in New York. This article was originally
published by Writ
FindLaw. She can be reached at: mariner@counterpunch.org.
Yesterday's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair
In
a Land Where Justice is a Game: Killing Amos King
Anne Gwynne
Raid
on Nablus: a Hero in the Midst of Horror
Nelson P. Valdés
Why Americans Can't Travel to Cuba
Jason Leopold
Martin Peretz to Bush: Bomb Iraq
Alan Maass
"A Revolutionary Spirit in a Hostile World":
The Real Martin Luther King, Jr
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens and Booze
Sonia Ebron
Why
Black Americans Should Oppose Bush's War
Russell Mokiber and Robert
Weissman
12
Reasons to Oppose Bush's War on Iraq
Abu Spinoza
Chomsky's Power and Terror
Website of the Day
Bush
AWOL
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|