Penny Conly Ellison

June 20, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Pennsylvania was known as the puppy mill capital of the East—if not the entire United States. There were over 350 licensed large-scale breeding kennels, often housing hundreds of dogs each, as well as countless unlicensed kennels. Prioritizing profits over the dogs' wellbeing, many of these large commercial kennels provided obscenely unsanitary and inhumane housing, little or no veterinary care for the dogs and kept the breeding dogs in cages or kennels for their entire lives. The dogs often got no exercise, had no protection from extremes of heat and cold and suffered from splayed paws as a result of having to stand on wire mesh rather than a solid floor.

By Penny Conly Ellison

8 minute read

March 20, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

We are 44! We are 44! There's a reason a cheer like that never caught on. Besides the size of the foam fingers you would need, it's nothing to brag about. The Animal Legal Defense Fund releases an annual report ranking states and territories by the strength of their animal protection laws. In 2014, I wrote an article in this space noting that Pennsylvania was ranked 41st and discussing all of the bills then pending in Harrisburg that might change that. Those bills included prohibiting tethering dogs outside in extreme weather, a bill raising offense levels and penalties for abuse of dogs and cats, a bill providing for the adoption of an animal abuser registry and the ubiquitous ban on live pigeon shoots. None of those bills saw the light of day and Pennsylvania is again at the bottom of the heap and dropping, ranking 44th, in the ALDF rankings for 2016.

By Penny Conly Ellison

12 minute read

December 19, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

Probably the biggest hurdle to ­bringing lawsuits to protect animals is the fact that animals are considered property under the law. The ramifications of that legal status cannot be overstated. It means, among other things, that the law does not recognize their suffering as a compensable harm in a tort case, that they cannot enforce the protections afforded them by statutes such as the Endangered Species Act or the Animal Welfare Act and that, as far as the law is concerned, their value is limited to their replacement cost. For decades, animal lawyers and ethicists have tried to chip away at this property status as a means of attaining some kind of rights for animals. Most recently, Steven Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project have received a fair amount of press attention for their battle in the courts of New York to establish rights for captive chimpanzees. The chimps, as named petitioners, are using the common law of habeus corpus to challenge the ­legality of their detention just as other "unjustly ­incarcerated beings" have done throughout history. While years of research have gone into arriving at such creative legal theories and determining the best forum to raise those kinds of novel arguments, having a court grant the habeas corpus petition of a captive chimpanzee is still asking for quite a large leap.

By Penny Conly Ellison

12 minute read

September 19, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

A municipal animal shelter that must take in all strays and ­owner-surrendered animals depends on volunteers and rescue groups to accomplish its mission. Staff provides the direct care (kennel cleaning, feeding, ­medical care, and administration) but ­relies—to a great extent—on volunteers to get the animals out of their cages and kennels for exercise and socialization and to promote them to adopters.

By Penny Conly Ellison

15 minute read

June 21, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

Many of us felt profound sadness when Harambe, a 17-year-old lowland gorilla, was executed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child climbed into his enclosure. Many questioned the parents for not supervising their child; others thought the zoo could have tried nonlethal alternatives to sedate rather than kill Harambe.

By Penny Conly Ellison

14 minute read

March 23, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

Many people would like to see their city become a no-kill city. In practice, that means that the shelters achieve at least a 90 percent live release rate for dogs and cats, and animals are euthanized only for serious medical or behavioral conditions, not just for lack of space.

By Penny Conly Ellison

15 minute read

December 21, 2015 | The Legal Intelligencer

Right now, in Pennsylvania, animal shelters and rescues have no way of knowing whether they are adopting a pet out to a convicted animal abuser.

By Penny Conly Ellison

7 minute read

December 21, 2015 | The Legal Intelligencer

Right now, in Pennsylvania, animal shelters and rescues have no way of knowing whether they are adopting a pet out to a convicted animal abuser.

By Penny Conly Ellison

7 minute read

September 21, 2015 | The Legal Intelligencer

Most animal advocates work toward a world where shelters are truly that: A temporary place to stay until a new home can be found. Shelters wish that the outflow of animals matched the intake so that they would never have to kill an animal for space but, sadly, that is not the case. Nationally, about half of all animals that enter shelters die there. In Philadelphia, we are doing somewhat better than that but still roughly 30 percent of the animals that entered the animal control shelter last year died there.

By Penny Conly Ellison

8 minute read

September 21, 2015 | The Legal Intelligencer

Most animal advocates work toward a world where shelters are truly that: A temporary place to stay until a new home can be found. Shelters wish that the outflow of animals matched the intake so that they would never have to kill an animal for space but, sadly, that is not the case. Nationally, about half of all animals that enter shelters die there. In Philadelphia, we are doing somewhat better than that but still roughly 30 percent of the animals that entered the animal control shelter last year died there.

By Penny Conly Ellison

8 minute read