Pet Animals — Should Rights be Expanded?

Estate planning to provide for the care of pet animals upon the death of the owner has become increasing popular over recent years.

There is growing interest in expanding protections for pet animals as extensively detailed in an article by Prof. David S. Favre of the MIchigan State University College of Law entitled Judicial Recognition of the Interests of Animals – A New Tort.  Here is the abstract of the article, which contains a section on estate planning issues, as provided on SSRN:

This article seeks to explore a simple but profound question:  how should our legal system deal with the claims of animals for protection against harms inflicted by humans? Rather than a focus on pain and suffering or the cognitive abilities of animals, this article will use the non-comparative approach based upon an interest analysis. The short answer is that our legal system can and should do what it always has done: balance the interests of competing individuals in a public policy context, always seeking to strike an ethically appropriate balance. The legislative branch of our government presently promotes the consideration of animal interests on this basis.

This article examines how the legal system presently balances such interests and how common law judges could expand, in a forthright manner, the consideration of animals’ interests.

Finally, this article will suggest a more expansive consideration of animals’ interests through the adoption of a new tort: intentional interference with a fundamental interest of an animal.

See also Anzalone v. Kragness, 826 N.E.2d 472 (Ill. App. Ct. 2005), in which the court held that when there is no fair market value for a pet (e.g., an animal picked up from the pound), damages for the death of the animal should be the loss to the pet owner.