History

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, causing all manner of destruction and loss of life. Lessons learned from this disaster led to changes in Federal Laws and national policies, including on the subject of animals. The Pet Evacuation Standards (PETS) Act, which conditioned FEMA funding upon state pet evacuation planning, was sponsored by the American Bar Association (ABA) Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS), then supported by the ABA House of Delegates, and passed by Congress on October 26, 2006. What was the Department of Homeland Security’s National Response Plan, which did not include animals, became the National Response Framework, including animals, on March 22, 2008.

On the subject of the father of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky, I am intrigued by his idea that the properties of language in the human mind are innate, and that language acquisition is a uniquely human ability. I thought about this, while imagining conversing in sign language with Coco, the gorilla. Then, I remembered that the 1984 Nobel Prize Laureate, Niels K. Jerne, equated components of Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar theory with various features of protein structures, with “some imagination.”

Cameras scan the world and show humans and animals dead in China, side by side, after the earth stopped shaking. One photo shows that the frogs got away. They probably used their inscrutable early warning system.

In my many years of practicing family law in Minnesota, there has been no statute that specifically addresses animals.   The only way they are covered is under the term “property,” although there is no mention in the law of animals at all. It is not even clear who owns animals at the end of a divorce proceeding, because the items of commercial value, like motor vehicles, are individually described, and otherwise, lawyers typically state that people are simply awarded the household furniture, furnishings and equipment in their possession. Presumably, animals fall somewhere in there.