Practicing animal law isn’t as cute and cuddly as it sounds.
Animal attorneys work to uphold state and federal laws that protect pets, wildlife and animals used for agriculture, research and entertainment.
May’s issue of Milwaukee Magazine explores what animal law entails and the types of cases local trial attorney Joe Goode takes on. Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez spoke with Goode to learn more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you explain what animal law is and how you became involved with this type of work?
First and foremost, every state in the United States, and many municipalities within those states, have a body of laws that protect animal welfare. We want to make sure animals are fed. We want to make sure that animals obtain water. We want to make sure that they're not housed outside when it's really cold or when it's really warm. We have a series of animal fighting laws covering various species, and the idea is that we want to treat our animals with respect. So, very broadly speaking, animal welfare laws relate to how we interrelate with animals as human beings.
How I got into [animal law] is a long story. I'm a trial lawyer here in Milwaukee and I do business-to-business disputes … In 2006, I was living in Madison, working at a firm, and I had a dear friend who was on the board of directors of the Dane County Humane Society… and they had a problem. They had inherited an impound of 62 pit bull dogs as part of a federal subpoena enforcement of a drug ring. And this fella, his name was Bob Lowery, was subject to this search warrant, and there were 62 pit bulls out on his farm, chained up, who, actually, it turned out later, were part of a giant dog fighting ring that Lowery ran. So he was getting chased for drugs, and he was getting chased for [the dog fighting ring]. The Humane Society took those dogs — they had a contract with Dane County at the time — and they were stuck, trying to figure out what to do about it. And that's how I first got involved. I didn't know anything about it. It was baptism by fire.
What type of animal law cases do you usually take on, and how often do these cases come up?
We don't see many large seizure impoundment cases. Typically, these [cases] are of two stripes. The Lowery case was literally involved in an animal fighting ring, and dogs that had been abused and were part of a fighting operation. More often, what we see is large-scale animal seizures from municipalities involve hoarding situations, where people with good intentions begin to take in animals, sometimes even as the designated rescue for a particular municipality. But they're under-resourced. They're understaffed. But because their basic mentality and approach is “I can save everything,” they end up doing a very poor job of saving anything. And you know, abuse and neglect are not necessarily animal fighting, in the sense of doing intentional acts to engage animals in fighting, but it still can be very, very harmful to the welfare of the animals.
So I would say, since 2006, I've probably been involved in seven large animal seizures around the state of Wisconsin, and these are large-scale events. They involve law enforcement, humane officers, [animal] shelters, and they also involve outside groups like the ASPCA and HSUS, because once you seize the animals, you have to have a place to place the animals. And the animals that are seized are owned by the person who is being subjected to the target and search and the potential criminal ramifications of their behavior. So there's a civil piece to it: What do you do with the animals while this matter is pending? And then, of course, there's the parallel criminal proceeding that's typically going on alongside it.
Animal law only makes up a small part of your practice, but it's not easy work. What motivates you to do this type of work?
Have you ever seen a dog smile? It's pretty easy [to want to do this work]. I mean, when you see animals who have gone from a beleaguered situation who, by the grace of God or the grace of something, get out of that situation, you know, people who are engaged, rolling up their sleeves and extricating them from bad situations, and you see them six months later. It's very, very worthwhile to watch what happens.
You can learn more about Milwaukee attorney Joe Goode’s work with animal law in Milwaukee Magazine’s May issue, which is out now.
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