In August, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in a New York case, Deblase v. Hill, that concerns a claim of infliction of emotional distress by a woman who was walking her son’s dog, Duke, and witnessed the dog getting struck by a car in front of her. You can read about the case here. Whether you live with a companion animal or not, it’s not hard to imagine the depth of the woman’s distress in this situation.
In New York, plaintiffs can sue for infliction of emotional distress if they suffer harm from witnessing an immediate family member getting injured while in the “zone of danger.” Under current law, dogs don’t qualify as immediate family for purposes of the “zone of danger” theory; only spouses, parents, children, and, more recently, grandparents do. Amicus briefing at the trial court level is highly unusual, but the court felt it was warranted in this instance.
What are amicus curiae briefs, and why are they important?
Latin for “friend of the court,” an amicus curiae requests permission from a court to advise it regarding a matter of law. An amicus curiae can be a person, an entity like a business, a nonprofit, a trade association, or the government, or a group of people or entities (in which case you’d use the plural form of the Latin noun for friend, amici curiae).
An amicus brief details the authors’ expertise and arguments regarding the case at hand. If the court grants the author(s) permission to file an amicus brief, the court can take into consideration their arguments along with the arguments made by the parties directly involved in the case.
Often, courts will cite to amicus briefs in their decisions. For example, New York Court of Appeals Justice Eugene M. Fahey favorably cited to the amicus and amici briefs submitted in support of the NhRP in the historic opinion he issued in our chimpanzee rights cases. In other words, he relied in part on what these experts wrote in their briefs as he urged his fellow judges to reject chimpanzees’ legal thinghood and treat the question of nonhuman animals’ rightlessness as
a deep dilemma of ethics and policy that demands our attention. To treat a chimpanzee as if he or she had no right to liberty protected by habeas corpus is to regard the chimpanzee as entirely lacking independent worth, as a mere resource for human use, a thing the value of which consists exclusively in its usefulness to others. Instead, we should consider whether a chimpanzee is an individual with inherent value who has the right to be treated with respect.
The NhRP’s amicus brief in Deblase v. Hill
While Deblase v. Hill is not a habeas corpus case or one about securing rights for nonhuman animals, we filed an amicus brief because it involves issues highly relevant to the NhRP’s work, specifically the evolving legal status of nonhuman animals, the role and duty of common law courts, and the fundamental demands of justice driven by evolving societal norms. Today we also filed a rebuttal to a brief filed by the American Veterinary Medicine Association and other groups that hypocritically argues dogs can’t be “immediate family” for purposes of New York’s zone of danger rule.
As we argue, there are two anachronistic reasons for excluding the family dog from one’s immediate family: (1) dogs are not members of the species Homo sapiens, and (2) dogs are merely personal property, akin to inanimate objects like pencils, tables, chairs, and toasters. As both reasons reflect arbitrary, irrational, and unfair thinking, they must be rejected as antithetical to justice. Times have changed, and so should the common law regarding New York’s zone of danger jurisprudence.
We look forward to seeing how the court rules.