Posted on 10/22/2021 2:23:39 PM PDT by algore
Pablo Escobar's famed hippos - who have thrived in Colombia since the notorious drug lord was killed almost 30 years ago - got a stay of execution after a United States federal court ruled that animals can be recognized as legal persons.
Judge Karen Litkovitz, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, issued the ruling Tuesday after the nonprofit Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) filed an application seeking to allow two experts in nonsurgical sterilization of wildlife to provide testimony supporting a Colombian lawsuit to stop a cull.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund made the request on behalf of the plaintiffs, the 'Community of Hippopotamuses Living in the Magdalena River,' which has been trying to save about 120 hippopotamuses from being slaughtered.
Litkovitz's ruling was based on a United States law that allows an 'interested person' in foreign litigation to request U.S. depositions to help their case.
'In granting the application ... to conduct discovery for use in foreign proceedings, the court recognized the hippos as legal persons with respect to that statute, the court recognized the hippos as legal persons with respect to that statute,' ALDF said in a statement.
More broadly speaking, it's the first concrete example of a US court authorizing animals to exercise a legal right in the animal's own name,' he added.
The lawsuit was filed July 31, 2020 on behalf of the hippos by attorney Luis Domingo Gómez Maldonado in Colombia, which already recognizes legal personhood for animals.
The movement to grant animals legal personhood has also been gaining momentum globally.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Now Am3lia H4mmy has a place to call home.
>>>a United States federal court ruled that animals can be recognized as legal persons<<<
Does this mean that they can now vote Democrat?
If hippos have this right, what about dogs and cats?
Yes and under this ruling that includes all animals. Killing animals for the benefit of humans would be illegal.
This is the holy grail for animal rights wackos.
What authority does the US court have over animals in COLUMBIA????
I had to check to see if this was the Babylon Bee, or whether “hippos” - like “coyotes” - is a euphemism for a certain type of criminal. Nope.
Send them to Afghanistan. I’m sure the Taliban would enjoy looking at something different other than a goat’s ass.
Typically, a magistrate judge for any Federal district court is a creature of the chief judge of the district at the time of appointment.
Judge Karen
Naturally, it’s a Judge Karen.
What do we have to do with their laws anyway.
Is that one of the U.S. Territories?
A lot of good it’s doing us.
Yeah, I don’t see chickens mentioned in the Bill of Rights.
Thank you, Republicans, for seating crazed lunatics like this “Judge”.
Send a few of them to the Judge’s back yard vegetable garden.
cocaine hippos?
Don’t mess with a big girl.
I’m trying to make sense out of this. So Columbia, a sovereign country, is going to treat some hippos differently because a court in the foreign country of the United States of America made a ruling? Is that the secondary gist of the story?
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