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 The nonprofit 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.
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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."
[By Bernard Vaughan and Daniel Wiessner]
(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan and Daniel Wiessner;
editing by
Barbara Goldberg and Steve Orlofsky)
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