NEW YORK - A U.S. animal rights group on Monday filed what
it said is the first lawsuit seeking to establish the "legal
personhood" of chimpanzees.
The non-profit Nonhuman Rights Project asked a New York state
court to declare a 26-year-old chimp named Tommy "a cognitively
complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right
not to be imprisoned."
The lawsuit seeks a declaration that Tommy's "detention" in a
"small, dank, cement cage in a cavernous dark shed" in central New
York is unlawful and demands his immediate release to a primate
sanctuary.
Chimpanzees "possess complex cognitive abilities that are so
strictly protected when they're found in human beings," Steven
Wise, the president of Nonhuman Rights Project, told Reuters.
"There's no reason why they should not be protected when they're
found in chimpanzees," he added.
The lawsuit on Tommy's behalf is among three the group is filing
this week on behalf of four chimps across New York. The other
chimps are Kiko, a 26-year-old chimp living on a private property
in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two young male chimps used
in research at Stony Brook University on Long Island, the group
said.
Tommy's owners, Patrick and Diane Lavery, and Stony university
did not immediately return requests for comment. Kiko's owners
could not be reached on Monday.
The Nonhuman Rights Project used its own research to find the
chimps, and Wise first visited Tommy in October after reading a
local newspaper article about exotic animals kept at the Laverys'
used trailer lot in Gloversville, New York, about 50 miles
northwest of Albany.
"He looked terrible," said Wise, who previously observed
healthy, wild chimps in Uganda. "Hey looked like a caged chimpanzee
- they don't move, they don't look at you. They look
depressed."
The lawsuit states that chimps are entitled to a "fundamental
right to bodily liberty," which Wise told Reuters is the basic
right to be left alone and not held for entertainment or
research.
The lawsuit was filed at "the earliest point at which we have
some reasonable chance at winning," said Wise, a well-known animal
rights activist and author of books including the 2000 title
"Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals."
"These are the first cases in an open-ended, strategic
litigation campaign," he said. "We're just going to keep filing
suits."
Nonhuman Rights Project in 2007 began a nationwide search for an
optimal venue to file the lawsuits, Wise said. New York was
ultimately chosen because of its generally flexible view of
requests for a writ of habeas corpus, the centuries-old right in
English law to challenge unlawful detention, he said.
David Favre, a professor at Michigan State University College of
Law and an expert on animal law, said it is the first habeas
petition filed on behalf of an animal.
"The focus here is whether a chimpanzee is a 'person' that has
access to these laws," said Favre.
The lawsuits come as medical authorities re-examine the
employment of chimpanzees in research in light of new technology
that renders the use of chimpanzees less necessary.
In a decision applauded by animal rights groups, the U.S.
National Institutes of Health in January said it was reducing its
use of chimps in biomedical research, retiring most to sanctuaries.
At the time, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins called chimps "very
special animals" that deserve "special consideration."
