My eponymous co-blogger Eugene Volokh has known as consideration to a case that entails the query whether or not a bumble bee is a “fish” for functions of a California statute. This type of drawback of peculiar statutory scope comes up typically (mischief rule to the rescue!). This explicit case delivered to thoughts a pithy case I typically train in Treatments. It is Knox v. Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 12 Mass. App. Ct. 407 (Mass. App. Ct. 1981), and is within the declaratory judgment chapter within the cures casebook that Emily Sherwin and I are the editors of (Ames, Chafee, and Re on Treatments).
Knox raises the query whether or not goldfish rely as “animals” below a Massachusetts statute. The courtroom decides sure: “We merely conclude, in decoding this humane statute designed to guard animals topic to attainable neglect by prizewinners, that [it] applies to goldfish.” The rationale it is a cures case is that it illustrates the type of scenario for which the declaratory judgment is apt, as a result of the events want an uncertainty clarified, and as soon as it’s clarified, they don’t want additional route and administration by the courtroom.
