Lowering the Bar

Woman Sues Wal-Mart for Nutria Attack

Reports last week stated that Rebecca White, of Abbeville, Louisiana, had sued Wal-Mart for injuries she allegedly suffered when a "large wild nutria" ran out from behind a rack of Coca-Cola products, causing her to run over her own foot with a shopping cart.

Nutria (myocastor coypus), for those who may not know, are large semi-aquatic rodents (myocastor means "mouse beaver"), indigenous to South America, that were brought to Louisiana in the 1930s for their fur and then escaped or were released into the wild.  (Although my knowledge of semi-aquatic rodents is of course encyclopedic, I learned these particular facts from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife's very informative site, www.nutria.com.)  They breed prolifically, love the wetlands, and in fact are eating the wetlands -- according to the LDW, there have been as many as 20 million nutria splashing around the state, devouring wetland plants, rice, and sugarcane, posing a serious ecological threat.

Ms. White claims that at least one of these was lurking in the Abbeville Wal-Mart, just waiting for the chance to scare her into running over her own foot.  Which she did, allegedly breaking several bones and causing nerve damage.  She alleges that employees then added insult to injury by making light of the incident, telling her that "she had an encounter with Norman," the name they had bestowed upon the nutria that they obviously knew had infiltrated the store.  The lawsuit contends that Wal-Mart was negligent in failing to warn her about Norman, by not making adequate efforts to capture and remove Norman, and by not taking steps to protect her from Norman (and from her own shopping cart).

As of May 7, Wal-Mart had not yet been served, and so would not comment on the suit.  Based on prior similar cases on which I've reported, involving alleged attacks on women by geese, squirrels, bats, and birds, Ms. White's chances of success are extremely low.  Her likely loss would make the score Animals 5, Women 0.

Louisiana has a major nutria control program underway, and you can do your part by eating as many as possible.  The program's webpage at least implies that this is in fact part of the plan, by providing recipes for several dishes featuring the allegedly tasty flesh of the nutria.  Recipes are offered for nutria chili, nutria jambalaya, smoked nutria and sausage gumbo, stuffed nutria hindquarters, and something called "Enola's Smothered Nutria," which requires one three-pound mouse beaver smothered in Enola's Secret Seasoning.  The recipe reminds you that when stirring the nutria stew, "scrape the bottom of [the] pot to remove all the goodness."  Mmm-mm.

Link: Abbeville Meridional
Link: ABA Journal.com

Dog-Walking Controversy May Cost Couple Their Home

Robert Wirth, Jr., and his wife, Sandra Blaker, are appealing a court's order directing them to pay over $40,000 in a case stemming from Wirth's insistence on walking their dog without a leash in violation of homeowners-association rules.  The association has a lien on their home, and says it will foreclose if they don't pay.

According to the report, Blaker actually owns the home, and it appears that Wirth does most or all of the dog-walking.  The article did not mention anything about how she feels about all this.  I assume they share the same feelings or else things may be getting a bit awkward in that household.

In 2003, after some initial skirmishes over Wirth's refusal to leash, the association fined him and his wife $1,000.  They refused to pay, so the association filed a lien and started legal proceedings.  The case has been dragging on ever since.  Last year, a trial judge ordered the couple to pay up, and said they are also on the hook for interest, attorneys' fees and other costs, so that they owe over $40,000.  Wirth was quoted as saying that he has (or they have) also been forced to spend over $100,000 on legal fees, meaning that the potential cost of the dispute is rapidly approaching half the value of the home.

The president of the association admitted that Wirth's unfettered Labrador was well-behaved and had not caused any problems (unlike Mr. Wirth, apparently, who he described as "very difficult"), but suggested that if they made an exception for this dog then other, more ill-mannered dogs might want one, too.  You know how dogs are.

Wirth probably did not help his case by suggesting he would shoot and kill one of the board members if necessary.  He has argued he is allowed to do so under Florida's "Stand Your Ground Law," which makes "imminent peril" a justification for deadly force under certain circumstances.  See Fla. Stat. sec. 776.013.  He might want to pay for some more legal advice on that topic, although police have said they think Wirth spoke out of frustration and does not pose imminent peril to anyone.

The appeal has been pending since February 2008.

Link: St. Petersburg Times
Link: Anthony Sebok on the Florida "Stand Your Ground" Law, FindLaw.com (May 2, 2005)

Motorcyclist Who Hit Wild Boars Awarded $8.6 Million

I can't remember how many times I have tried to warn people that bad things were going to happen if we didn't tame our state's boars and train them to be more alert when crossing the street.  Why don't people listen?

Tame the boars, people!

Last Friday, a jury in Monterey, California, ruled that the state would have to pay Adam Rogers $8.6 million for injuries that he suffered in a 2003 traffic accident.  Rogers, who had allegedly been drinking, was riding his motorcycle on state Highway 1 just south of Carmel when he hit six wild boars that were crossing the road.  (He probably didn't hit all six, but that's what the article says.)  Rogers suffered very serious injuries in the crash.

He then sued the state Department of Transportation, arguing that it was responsible for the accident because officials allegedly knew the pigs were regularly crossing the road, not just to get to the other side but to feed on vegetation that the state was tortiously encouraging to grow as part of an environmental restoration project.  Yet the state did nothing to deal with this, said Rogers' attorney, Larry Biegel.  "This was a situation that they, the state, created," he said, "and then once they created it and saw what was happening they did nothing to stop it."

How would one deal with such a situation, were one inclined to do so?  (Short of the mass pig taming I have been calling for, that is.)  Biegel pointed to the fact that, after the accident, the state put up a "Pig Crossing" sign and used hunters to keep the pig population down.  I'd think those would have been inadmissible "subsequent remedial measures," and in fact it's not clear from the report whether this evidence was admitted or not.  And it's even less clear to me how either of those measures would have prevented this accident.  Pigs don't read; and unless you kill every pig in the state, which would probably be almost as hard as taming them all, there is still a chance that one of them is going to dart out and throw himself under a motorcyclist.  But the jury apparently disagreed with this analysis.

It also discounted the fact that, at least according to the Chronicle report, Rogers was legally drunk at the time of the accident, with a blood-alcohol level of .10.  The jury, however, concluded that alcohol "wasn't a major factor in the crash."

Link: AP via SFGate.com

Clarification: Monkey v. Ape

While I dearly wish that "Monkey v. Ape" was the name of a reported case, or maybe something you might be able to see on pay-per-view, here I am using the phrase to refer to a question raised this weekend by a reader of a previous item, "Faked Evidence Fails to Conceal Ape's Whereabouts."

As you may recall, the animal in question was a "marmoset."  Now, although there is more of a dispute about primate taxonomy than I (and, probably, you) might have expected, there is no question that a marmoset is a "monkey."  Specifically, it is one of the "New World monkeys," which tend to be smaller than their Old World cousins and so have a much harder time learning to juggle.  The question is whether it was acceptable to refer to the marmoset as an "ape."

Technically, the answer is probably no.  "Ape" is more often used (as in the graphic above) to refer only to any member of the Hominoidea "superfamily", which includes humans and the larger primates like gorillas but also the gibbon family (Hylobatidae), and don't pretend that you didn't also think gibbons were "monkeys" like I did until just now.  But the New World and Old World monkeys are on different branches of the tree, and that is not a great joke but if you think it's easy to make primate taxonomy funny, I encourage you to start your own blog and give it a shot.

So, by that criteria, humans, gorillas, chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and gibbons are "apes" but other primates, including marmosets, are not.  Those other primates are not all "monkeys," either, but that is beyond the scope of this post which is already well beyond the scope of this blog.

On the other hand, "ape" is not a technical term at all and so one could argue that it therefore isn't incorrect to use that term loosely to refer to a wider variety of primates, if, for example, you just think it's an inherently funny word for some reason.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, which I find is generally correct at least when it agrees with me, "the original usage of 'ape' in English might have referred to the baboon, an African monkey," and the term was traditionally used to refer to any non-human primates that did not have tails.  And since this blog is anything but scientific, I think it is fair to conclude that "ape" was appropriate here, though I am glad the issue was called to my attention.

Wikipedia also claims that a group of apes can be referred to as either a "troop" or a "shrewdness," and I like "a shrewdness of apes" well enough that I'm just going to start using it without looking it up any further.

Link: Mammal Species of the World (on-line database)
Link: Great Ape Trust

Faked Evidence Fails to Conceal Ape's Whereabouts

A California man is in trouble again after failing to comply with a court order to give up his monkey and doctoring evidence to make it appear he had done so.

Authorities said David Grigorian pleaded guilty earlier this year to possessing a marmoset without a permit, which is illegal in California, and had agreed to either turn the animal over or have it transported out of state.  Grigorian was told to come back to court this week and show Commissioner Thomas Grodin that he had complied.

On Wednesday, Grigorian told the commissioner that Cheeta, a 7-year-old marmoset, was now safely in Mexico.  According to the report, to prove the ape's whereabouts he "displayed a photo of Cheeta beside a recently dated Mexican newspaper. . . . Red, white and green decorations [the colors of the Mexican flag] filled the background."  But Grigorian broke down under cross-examination by the skeptical commissioner, and eventually admitted that the monkey was actually in downtown Los Angeles.  Parts of which, as you may know, are also festooned with red, white and green decorations.

Despite furious Googling I have been unable to locate a copy of the bogus photo.  The one shown here is at least a picture of an ape named "Cheeta," namely the chimpanzee who appeared by that name in the "Tarzan" movies.  This picture was taken on the occasion of Cheeta's 75th birthday, a milestone that few chimps ever reach.  Had Grigorian been able to get his Cheeta into the movies, he could have gotten a permit to keep him, since California does allow nonnative primates to be kept for educational or professional purposes.  (I'm not sure whether any "professional" purpose will do, but professional acting is apparently on the list.)  But Grigorian didn't have a permit, which police discovered when they arrested him in January for allegedly making criminal threats at a house in Van Nuys.

Grigorian then agreed to give up the monkey, in a "somewhat complicated plan" under which he would surrender Cheeta to the Department of Fish and Game, which would transfer Cheeta to a courier who would take him to Nevada, where Grigorian would pick him up for delivery to a caretaker in Arizona.  What could go wrong?  But Grigorian was later stopped for a traffic violation in Burbank, and unfortunately Cheeta was found riding shotgun.  This week's hearing was to confirm that this time, Cheeta had been relocated.  Another hearing is now scheduled for next week.

Officials said they sympathized with Grigorian, but that the law did not allow him to keep an ape without a permit.  They said they would try to place Cheeta in a zoo or with a private owner in a nearby state so that Grigorian could visit him.

Link: Los Angeles Times
Link: MSNBC.com

Goats Freed From Congo Jail

A herd of goats has managed to escape justice after a government official found them sitting in jail in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Deputy Justice Minister Claude Nyamugabo said he was on a routine visit to the Kinshasa jail recently when he was surprised to find a herd of goats in one of the cells. Prison officials told him that the goats had been charged with "being sold illegally by the roadside" and were due to appear in court to answer for their crimes.  Outraged, Nyamugabo ordered the goats released immediately.  (The goat-sellers themselves apparently are still incarcerated.)  He said that local police apparently had "serious gaps in their knowledge" and would be sent for retraining, suggesting that the Congo Police Academy has a course that covers whether or not to put goats in jail.

The report did not say what the penalty is for being sold illegally by the roadside, but I think we can speculate that it involves some sort of barbecue.

Link: BBC News

Pets Too Sexy For Saudi Arabia, Say Religious Police

Are there any two words as comforting as "religious police"?  Doubtful.  Especially if they follow the words "Saudi Arabia's."

Saudi Arabia's religious police, also known by the even more comforting title "The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice," said recently that citizens in Riyadh would no longer be allowed to buy or sell cats and dogs, or to go out in public with cats and dogs they already own.  The completely sensible reason: men have reportedly been using the pets to try to meet women, which it seems must be prevented at all costs.

The head of the CPVPV, Othman al-Othman (or as we would say in the West, Othman Jr.), said that his commission was following an "old religious edict" that had been issued (when, he didn't say) by the supreme council of Saudi scholars.  It was being enforced now, he said, because of increasing problems with men using the animals "to make passes on women and disturb families."  He did not give details of how families were being disturbed by the pet-wielders.  "If a man is caught with a pet," al-Othman said, the pet will be immediately confiscated and the man will be forced to sign a document pledging not to repeat the act.  If he does, he will be referred to authorities."

The Commission is also the group responsible for such crowd-pleasers as requiring women to be covered from head to toe in public, and not letting them drive at all.  It also handles the concessions for the Saturday-afternoon-matinee beheadings.  (The graphic to the right was created by the then-anonymous Saudi author of a blog called The Religious Policeman.  He somehow kept his head but lives in England now.)

The AP report suggested that the real motive behind the ban was simply to reduce pet ownership, which conservative Saudis view as a sign of Western influence.  The report said pet ownership is uncommon in the Arab world, but is becoming increasingly fashionable among the upper class, which may be causing the anti-pet backlash.  While dogs are considered "unclean" in Islamic tradition, the report said the ban on cats is more puzzling, since the Koran makes it fairly clear that at least one close companion of the Prophet Muhammad was a cat-lover.

Link: AP via Yahoo! News

Posner Affirms Conviction, Laments Ostrich Myth

On June 25, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the conviction of Conrad Black, one of several former newspaper executives found guilty last year of defrauding their company out of millions of dollars.  In a bad sign for the defendants, the opinion was issued just 20 days after oral argument.  In a good sign for us, it was written by Judge Posner.

Among other things, the defendants argued that the jury should not have been given the "ostrich instruction," which, it turns out, is an instruction that says a defendant who lacked certain knowledge can still be found guilty if the evidence shows he intentionally avoided knowing the truth -- so, claiming you saw nothing because you had your head in the sand won't work.  For example, Posner wrote, "[i]f you receive a check in the mail for $1 milllion that you have no reason to think you're entitled to, you cannot just deposit it and when prosecuted for theft say you didn't know you weren't entitled to it."  So much for the "I thought some billionaire liked me" defense, unfortunately.

While he thought it was "too late" to matter, Judge Posner still valiantly took a shot at rescuing the reputation of the ostrich, which, he noted, does not actually stick its head in the sand:

The reference of course is to the legend that ostriches when frightened bury their head in the sand. It is pure legend and a canard on a very distinguished bird. Zoological Society of San Diego, Birds: Ostrich (visited June 12, 2008) ("When an ostrich senses danger and cannot run away, it flops to the ground and remains still, with its head and neck flat on the ground in front of it. Because the head and neck are lightly colored, they blend in with the color of the soil. From a distance, it just looks like the ostrich has buried its head in the sand, because only the body is visible").  It is too late, however, to correct this injustice.

United States v. Black, et al., No. 07-4080, slip op. at 12-13  (7th Cir. June 25, 2008).

Worth a try, though.  If ostriches were not seen as such a pushover, then there might be less ostrich-related violence, and the resulting increase in the self-confidence of male ostriches might lead to more ostriches.  Which, I think we can all agree, would be a good thing.

Link: Chicago Sun-Times

Ape Appeals

As expected, Matthew Pan (or his handlers, depending on how you view this story), has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.  You may recall that Pan is a chimpanzee currently residing in Austria.  An animal-rights group took his case to court after the shelter where he had lived for 25 years closed for lack of funds.  The group says the only way to be sure that Pan is not deported and possibly mistreated is to have him declared a legal "person" so that a guardian can be appointed for him.

Austrian courts have refused to do this, although it appears that they have so far avoided the central legal question of personhood by ruling that even if Mr. Pan could be considered a person, there are no current grounds to appoint a guardian because he is "neither mentally impaired nor in danger."  Presumably the European court would take up the question of legal status if it decides to take the case.

According to a Daily Mail story on May 21, a British teacher living in Vienna has offered to adopt the chimp if he is declared a "person."  "Since he has no close relatives," she said, and since they would also be apes if he did, "I am doing this as the person closest to him."

Link: Daily Mail Online

Bear Convicted

Reuters News reported last week that a court in Bitola, Macedonia, has convicted a bear of theft and property damage in a case brought by a beekeeper.

Rumors of violent protests against the ruling in Jellystone Park could not be immediately confirmed.

Beekeeper Zoran Kiseloski told reporters after the case concluded that he had tried to deter the bear from stealing his honey in the first place.  "I tried to distract the bear with lights and music because I heard bears are afraid of that," said Kiseloski.  The source of his bear-deterrence information was not disclosed, but it appears to have been successful.

This may or may not have been related to the fact that the music involved was "turbo-folk," a style that became popular in Serbia, along with war crimes, during the 1990s.  The best-known turbo-folk artist, Ceca (a.k.a. Svetlana Ražnatović), was once married to notorious criminal and paramilitary leader Arkan, until he was assassinated in 2000.  She remains extremely popular in Serbia.

Bears hate her, though.

Kiseloski's plan worked until his generator died.  But then the bear, which seems to have loitered just out of turbo-folk range, returned and destroyed the beehives, stealing the honey and possibly nearby pic-a-nic baskets.  What to do?  Answer: prosecute the bear.

According to the report, the case lasted a year.  It was not clear why this took so long -- they may have been trying to find the bear, which had absconded, or it is possible that there was an earlier conviction that was thrown out due to problems with the lineup used to identify the culprit.

What was the point of convicting the bear, anyway?  The court seems to have reasoned that, ordinarily, convicting the bear would make its owner responsible for the damage.  In this case, the bear was a free agent, but the court apparently extended this doctrine to the state by noting that the bear, an endangered species, was under state protection.  Thus, the effect of the conviction was to force the state to pay the beekeeper's damages, approximately 140,000 denars (which may or may not be a lot).

I suggest that the state try to recover some of these denars by suing the purveyors of turbo-folk for environmental damage and/or bear harassment.  Hey, if the beekeeper won, I don't see why this wouldn't work, too.

Link:  Reuters via Yahoo! News