Court Calendar

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

A two-judge panel from the Supreme Court of India on March
11, 2004 upheld the right of civil authorities to ban the sale of
meat, fish, and eggs within the pilgrimage city of Rishikesh. The
ban was first formally proclaimed in 1956, and was extended in 1976.

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI in April 2004 agreed
to pay $2 million to Earth First! activist Darryl Cherney and the
estate of the late Judi Bari in settlement of a civil suit resulting
from the FBI response to a bomb that detonated in their car in
Oakland, California on May 24, 1990. Bari, who never fully
recovered from her injuries, died of cancer in 1997. The FBI
investigated Cherney and Bari as suspects in making and transporting
the bomb, but never charged them, while allegedly ignoring evidence
that the bomb may have been planted by opponents of Earth First!
After a two-month trial in 2002, a federal jury ordered the FBI and
Oakland police to pay $4.4 million to Cherney and the Bari estate.
The city of Oakland agreed to pay $2 million in four annual
installments, but the FBI appealed.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 5, 2004 ruled that the
1971 legislative designation of mourning doves as the state symbols
of peace was not intended by to preclude mourning dove
hunting–although dove hunting was banned at the time, and although
the designation occurred in response to the beginning of a 30-year
crusade by hunters to open a dove hunting season. The Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources estimates that 202,000 mourning doves
were killed during the 60-day mourning dove season in fall 2003, the
state’s first.

The Vermont Supreme Court ruled on April 2, 2004 that the
Addison County Humane Society did not violate the proprietary rights
of the Hegarty family, of East Middlebury, in seizing a horse
without a warrant in August 2000. Believing the horse to be in
imminent danger of starvation, based on the observations of a humane
officer and a veterinarian, the humane society took the horse into
custody and treated him for 12 days before returning him to the
family. The court ruled that the Vermont humane law allows such
emergency intervention.