Bruce Wagman's life work -- protecting the underserved
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Page CM-4
Bruce Wagman knows he will lose a lot of cases. Wagman, a partner at Schiff Hardin in San Francisco, is an attorney representing animals against humans. Those are tough cases to try but Wagman, 50, has an obligation.
THE LIGHTBULB: I’ve only had one revelation in my life. That was in August, 1992 at the American Bar Association Conference in San Francisco. I attended a session on animal rights law. I walked about 20 feet and said to my wife, “That’s it. It’s over.” I meant our prior life as meat-eaters and leather wearers.
I was a nurse for seven years and switched species. My first day as a lawyer, in November, 1992, I started sending letters, probably nearly 100, to every animal protection group in America, saying, "I'm here. Can I help?" I began doing work on a pro bono basis. The first case I did involved an effort to protect the tule elk that live in Point Reyes National Seashore. We didn't succeed in changing anything for the tule elk.
Many cases for animal lawyers are not a success because we're trying to change the world. I like to think of it as animal law. It covers a broader range than animal rights or animal welfare or animal protection. For the last three and a half years, it's been 95 percent of my practice. In 2005, I represented the Animal Legal Defense Fund in a case in North Carolina. We rescued 330 dogs from a hoarding situation, with disease rampant and suffering on a daily basis. It was the biggest civil rescue ever, in the country. We have fostered out every single one of those dogs.
Hoarding is a national epidemic and the largest threat to companion animals in America. It's akin to people who collect bottle caps. The big difference is they're affecting the lives of sentient beings. Hoarding cases seem very obvious, but they are difficult cases to bring. One of the big problems is that hoarders are not intentional abusers. If my neighbor hits my dog with a bat, that's a pretty straightforward case of cruelty. Hoarders are involved in severe neglect. The animals are suffering, but it's only by neglect. It's by omission as opposed to intent, so it requires an incredible amount of evidence to prove that suffering is ongoing.
I was recently involved in a case in which, ultimately, we rescued four chimpanzees and shut down an abuser who claimed to be training chimpanzees for use in the entertainment industry. I've oddly enough developed a subniche of chimpanzee law. There are between 2,000 and 3,000 chimpanzees living around the country, mostly in entertainment facilities or private homes. That's separate from research chimpanzees.
I've got eight animals at home, in Stinson Beach, so I do have rescue animals, but none of them are from the cases I've handled. They've all come from local animal shelters. I have three dogs and five cats, currently, and one wife. The limit in Marin County is three dogs and that's why I have three dogs. There is no limit on the number of cats.
I am involved tangentially in animal protection legislation. We're trying to get a bill into the legislature, which will allow for a civil remedy for cruelty so that animal protection organizations can protect the interest of animals. It doesn't have a sponsor yet.
I think the animals in society deserve a level of protection that they're clearly not getting yet. That's why I've made it my life's work. I don't think they should be allowed to freely run down the street and vote and drive cars. But they should be free from abuse. Ten billion animals are killed in this country for our food, and 10 billion of those, minus a thousand, are treated inhumanely at every level of their lives. Dairy cows probably suffer a lot more than beef cows. They live a very tortured life and virtually every dairy cow in America ends up in a fast food hamburger.
