Animal (Court) House

Swiss may grant lawyers for animals
By Eliane Engeler, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GENEVA - Lawyer Antoine F. Goetschel feels uncomfortable talking about one of his recent clients. And it isn't just because he lost the case.

"Fish don't get much sympathy," he explains. That's doubly true for the unnamed dead pike whose cause Goetschel took up earlier this month, much to the amusement of Swiss anglers who couldn't understand why one of their own was being hauled into court for landing a big catch.

Goetschel is Europe's only animal lawyer and the figurehead for a movement that wants to expand Zurich's pioneering legal system across Switzerland.

Voters will decide in a March 7 poll whether every canton (state) should be required to appoint an animal lawyer to represent the interests of pets and farm animals in court - in effect a dedicated public prosecutor for dogs, cats and other vertebrates that have been abused by humans.

"Swiss law has taken a big step forward in recent years" particularly for animals that live in groups, Goetschel tells The Associated Press.

The country's constitution now prohibits keeping pigs in single pens and budgies alone in a cage - solitary confinement, as Goetschel calls it.

Dog owners have to take a training course and from 2013 it will be forbidden to tie horses in their stalls.

People may want to paint animal lawyers in an unflattering light but it presents an interesting challenge when your client can't aid in his own defense and won't stop licking his own balls in open court. If O.J. had barked at a juror or sniffed the baliff's nads Johnnie Cochran would have never gotten him off. Plus its never nice to be paid in chewed up bones and dead birds.

In all seriousness, haven't cruelty against animals cases been going pretty smoothly without animal attorneys? This just seems like another ridiculous step in the world of pet worship But it least it gives a great opportunity to Meowsy McDermott, Snarky Cat Lawyer.