Results
| Title | Citation | Alternate Citation | Summary | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| State v. Overholt | 193 P.3d 1100 (Wash. App. Div. 3,2008) |
Defendant was convicted of several counts of second degree unlawful hunting of big game after a game agent (“agent”) followed vehicle tracks to Defendant’s home upon finding fresh cow elk gut piles, and Defendant showed the agent two cow elk carcasses hanging in Defendant’s shed. On appeal, the Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 3 found that because the agent was in fresh pursuit of criminal activity and did not enter Defendant’s property with the intent to obtain consent to search in order to evade a search warrant, the agent was not obligated to issue Ferrier warnings, and that suppressing the seized carcasses from evidence would not have altered the outcome of the case in light of the substantial evidence obtained prior to seizing the carcasses. |
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| Moody v. State | 253 Ga. 456 (1984) | 253 Ga. 456 (1984) |
Fifty-nine defendants appealed a judgment, which overruled a motion quash an indictment charging defendants with violating the dogfighting statute, O.C.G.A. § 16-12-37 . The court ruled the statute was not unconstitutionally overbroad, and that it required knowing and consensual involvement in dogfighting, therefore intent. The court further ruled that the law prohibited participation by gambling on the act, and the statute did not infringe on constitutionally protected conduct. |
Case |
| Schindler v. Mejias | 100 A.D.3d 1315 (N.Y.A.D. 3 Dept., 2012) | 2012 WL 5950370 (N.Y.A.D. 3 Dept.); 955 N.Y.S.2d 252 |
This appeal is an appeal of the denial of defendant's motion for summary judgment in a defamation action. Plaintiff, an attorney, brought an action against Hector L. Mejias Jr., an employee of defendant Ulster County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, claiming that Mejias falsely accused him of misrepresenting himself as the Ulster County District Attorney during a sworn deposition. The statement occurred during an incident at the SPCA where Plaintiff-Schindler was trying to pick up a dog owned by his client. The particular issue on appeal is whether the supreme court erred in determining that Mejias's supporting deposition constitutes libel per se. The court found that the alleged act was sufficiently egregious because such a claim would suggest professional misconduct on an attorney's part and invites both disciplinary action and damage to an attorney's professional reputation. Further, defendants failed to meet their burden of showing an absence of malice. The order was affirmed. |
Case |
| U.S. v. Fountain | 277 F.3d 714 (5th Cir. 2001) |
Roosevelt Fountain, Sr. ("Fountain") and his daughter, Shirley Fountain Ellison ("Ellison") operated an oyster fishing business in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, called Fountain Seafood, Inc., where their convictions arose from the manner in which they operated the business (i.e., tagging violations, taking of oysters from closed areas, taking of excess limits of oysters, and licensing violations). The indictment further contended that the appellants worked to accomplish this goal by creating false records relating to their oyster sales. The court held that it was not error for no instruction on the term "willfully," since the false record provision refers to "knowingly" as the mens rea requirement. Further, the court held that "materiality" is also not a provision of the Lacey Act's false records provision. |
Case | |
| Lyman v. Lanser | --- N.E.3d ----, 2024 WL 970217 (Mass. App. Ct. Mar. 7, 2024) | 103 Mass. App. Ct. 787 (2024) | This case is an appeal concerning an agreement to share possession of a dog between a couple that had ended their relationship. The lower court granted the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction, the court of appeals vacated the order, then this appeal followed. The parties purchased the dog together while they were still a couple, and agreed to share the dog if they broke up. After the relationship eventually ended, the couple shared the dog on a two week alternating basis. Eventually, one party maintained custody of the dog and denied the other party access to the dog, so plaintiff filed this action for conversion and breach of contract, seeking specific performance of the custody agreement for the dog. The court here found that the dog is jointly owned property, the lack of a written contract does not bar the plaintiff from specific performance, and that the judge's order of specific performance was a suitable remedy since monetary damages would not allow plaintiff access to his shared property. Therefore, the court reversed the order vacating the preliminary injunction and denied the defendant's petition for relief from the preliminary injunction. | Case |
| Sentencia C-467/16 | Sentencia C-467/16 | This lawsuit seeks the unconstitutionality of articles 665 and 658 of the Civil Code that define "movable objects" and "real property by destination." The plaintiff alleges that these categorizations are against the Constitution's environmental orientation and international agreements. The court upheld the validity of these articles and stated that such categorizations were not against legally considering animals as sentient beings deserving of protection against pain and suffering. In other words, the protection of animals is not affected by this language. "Animals are included in the category of property because property rights may be exercised over them, and animals are often the subjects of legal transactions. Therefore, categorizing animals as property responds to a necessity and does not affect the regulation in other provisions to develop the duty to protect animals as sentient beings (Law 1774, 2016)." | Case | |
| Eldorado Community Improvement Association Inc. v. Billings | 374 P.3d 737 (N.M. Ct. App., 2016) | 2016 WL 1213269 (N.M. Ct. App., 2016) | In this case, Eldorado Subdivision sued some residents who kept hens as pets at their homes. The subdivision had a covenant (Section 11) that disallowed “animals, birds, or poultry” on residents' lots unless kept as “recognized household pets." The defendant-residents claimed that their hens were pets and thus met the household pet exception in the covenant. The lower court agreed with the subdivision and ordered the owners to remove the hens. On appeal, this court looked at the actual language of the covenant, which the court did find to be "unclear and ambiguous." However, the court found that if the residents did not want poultry as household pets, it is reasonable to assume the residents would have removed language that anticipates poultry as household pets. The court here found that the lower court applied the wrong precedent and should have applied a case that favored free use of the land because the covenant is ambiguous. The ruling should not be based on what the developer of the subdivision may have had in mind in writing Section 11 or how community members would interpret its meaning. Instead, the court found that the Section 11 does not disallow hens as pets and rebuffed plaintiffs' "Chicken Little-esque view" that "the sky will fall" if chickens were permitted as pets. In fact, the court observed that if the lot owners want a different result, they must change Section 11 through the election process set out in the covenants. The judgment of the lower court was reversed. | Case |
| NC - Ordinances - § 160A-186. Regulation of domestic animals | N.C.G.S.A. § 160A-186 | NC ST § 160A-186 | This North Carolina statute provides that a city may by ordinance regulate, restrict, or prohibit the keeping, running, or going at large of any domestic animals, including dogs and cats. The ordinance may provide that animals allowed to run at large in violation of the ordinance may be seized and sold or destroyed after reasonable efforts to notify their owner. | Statute |
| Com. v. Kneller | 971 A.2d 495 (Pa.Super.,2009) | 2009 WL 215322 (Pa.Super.), 2009 PA Super 18 | Defendant appealed a conviction for criminal conspiracy to commit cruelty to animals after Defendant provided a gun and instructed her boyfriend to shoot and kill their dog after the dog allegedly bit Defendant’s child. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania reversed the conviction, finding the relevant animal cruelty statute to be ambiguous, thus requiring the reversal under the rule of lenity. Concurring and dissenting opinions were filed, in which both agreed that the statute is unambiguous as to whether a dog owner may destroy his or her dog by use of a firearm when that dog has attacked another person, but disagreed as to whether sufficient evidence was offered to show that the dog in fact attacked another person. (See Supreme Court order - Com. v. Kneller, 978 A.2d 716, 2009 WL 5154265 (Pa.,2009)). | Case |
| Faulkner v. Watt | 661 F.2d 809 (9th Cir. 1981) |
Reaffirms that purpose of the Taylor Grazing Act (TGA) is to stabilize the livestock industry and protect the rights of sheep and cattle growers from interference and that the Secretary of the Interior may reasonably classify lands under the TGA as suitable for agriculture. |
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