Also known as: wild animals · animals ferae naturae
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
Animals that exist in a wild state by nature and remain unowned until reduced to possession. Classification as ferae naturae turns on the species rather than the tameness of any individual specimen.
Bayview Shipyard kept an aggressive sea lion in a low pen near scrap metal that attracted nighttime intruders. Carlos trespassed onto the dock to harvest mussels and was bitten when he leaned over the barrier. The court analyzed the shipyard's duty by treating the sea lion as an artificial condition rather than applying any special wild-animal rule.
Post started a fox with his hounds and chased it across open fields. Pierson shot and killed the fox just as Post was about to seize it. The court held that Post acquired no property right because he never achieved possession of the wild animal.
Lodowick Post was in possession of dogs and hounds under his command. Upon wild and uninhabited waste land called the beach, he found and started one of those noxious beasts called a fox. Post then hunted, chased, and pursued the fox with his dogs and hounds while the animal remained in view. Pierson, well knowing that the fox was so hunted and pursued, killed and carried it off in the sight of Post to prevent his catching the same. Post commenced an action of trespass on the case against Pierson in a justice's court. The declaration set forth these facts, and a verdict was rendered for Post as the plaintiff below. Pierson sued out a certiorari directed to one of the justices of Queens county. The cause came before the court on the return to the certiorari. The proceedings presented the question of whether Post had acquired a property right in the fox sufficient to maintain the action against Pierson for killing and taking it away.
View caseSouth Carolina required nonresidents to pay a much higher fee than residents for a commercial shrimp license. Toomer challenged the statute as violating the privileges and immunities clause. The Court rejected the state's claim that fish were ferae naturae held in trust solely for its own citizens.
In 1947 five Georgia residents engaged in commercial shrimp fishing and a Florida nonprofit corporation representing fish dealers filed suit in federal district court against South Carolina officials charged with enforcing state fishing laws. The plaintiffs sought to enjoin enforcement of several South Carolina statutes governing commercial shrimp trawling in the three-mile maritime belt off the South Carolina coast. The shrimp fishery extends along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Florida and involves migratory shrimp that move southward in late summer and fall before returning northward in spring. With no federal regulation in place, the four states most directly involved adopted separate conservation and licensing measures. These measures produced differing restrictions on non-resident fishing and led to reciprocal limitations that effectively partitioned the fishery at state lines. South Carolina statutes impose a tax of one-eighth cent per pound on green shrimp taken in the maritime belt, require non-resident boat owners to pay an annual license fee of $2,500 per boat while residents pay $25, condition issuance of non-resident licenses on proof that the applicant has paid South Carolina income taxes on profits from operations in the state during the preceding year, and direct that all licensed boats must dock at a South Carolina port, unload, pack, and stamp their catch before it may be shipped or transported to another state. The state also maintains an annual closed season from March 1 to July 1 and prohibits trawling in its inland waters. A three-judge federal district court upheld the statutes, denied injunctive relief, and dismissed the suit. The plaintiffs took a direct appeal, and the Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. Some of the individual appellants had previously been convicted of shrimping out of season and in inland waters. The corporate plaintiff operates no fishing boats.
View caseMontana charged nonresidents substantially higher fees for elk and deer hunting licenses than residents. Baldwin sued, arguing the differential violated the privileges and immunities clause. The Court noted that wild animals remain ferae naturae until captured and that states may regulate them without creating a property right for nonresidents.
In 1975 and 1976 Montana required a resident to pay nine dollars for an elk license and four dollars for a tag. A nonresident had to buy a combination license for two hundred twenty-five dollars plus a tag for one hundred fifty-one dollars. This produced totals of thirteen dollars for residents and three hundred seventy-six dollars for nonresidents. Appellants included Lester Baldwin, a Montana resident and licensed outfitter whose customers were mostly nonresidents. Nonresidents Carlson, Huseby, Lee, and Moris from Minnesota traveled to Montana each year to hunt elk and had purchased the higher-priced nonresident licenses in prior seasons. Montana maintained more than four hundred outfitters. The State had a force of seventy game wardens. Each warden covered roughly two thousand one hundred square miles. The State spent more than twenty-six million dollars on wildlife management between 1966 and 1976, of which approximately thirteen million dollars came from license fees. The State determined annual elk harvest numbers from census data and winter-range availability. It issued seventeen thousand resident and twelve hundred nonresident licenses in 1975. Elk were concentrated in the mountainous western third of the State and depended on private ranch lands for winter forage. Nonresident big-game licenses rose five hundred thirty percent from 1960 to 1970 while resident licenses rose sixty-seven percent. Nonresidents constituted about thirteen percent of all hunters in the 1974-1975 season. In 1975 the five appellants filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Montana against the Fish and Game Commission, its director, and its five commissioners. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief plus partial reimbursement of fees already paid. A three-judge district court, with one judge dissenting in part, upheld the statutes. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in 1977.
View caseHarmelin received a mandatory life sentence without parole for possessing a large quantity of cocaine. He argued the punishment was cruel and unusual. The Court observed that historical analogies to ferae naturae do not limit a state's authority to impose severe penalties for serious offenses.
Ronald Harmelin was convicted in Michigan state court of possessing 672 grams of cocaine. Michigan law imposed a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole for that quantity of the drug. Harmelin had no prior felony convictions. The Michigan Court of Appeals initially reversed the conviction because evidence supporting it had been obtained in violation of the Michigan Constitution. On petition for rehearing, the Court of Appeals vacated its prior decision and affirmed the sentence. The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari. The quantity of cocaine at issue had a potential yield of between 32,500 and 65,000 doses. The sentencing court imposed the mandatory term without considering any individualized circumstances of the offense or the offender. Harmelin challenged the sentence on Eighth Amendment grounds, arguing both that it was grossly disproportionate to the crime and that the mandatory nature of the penalty was unconstitutional.
View casePreston Mill maintained a captive bear on its property for display. The bear escaped through a fence gap and injured a neighboring farmer's livestock. The court held the mill strictly liable because the animal remained ferae naturae even after temporary captivity.
B. W. Foster owned a mink ranch located in a rural area one and one-half miles east of North Bend in King County, Washington. The ranch occupied seven and one-half acres and included seven sheds housing mink in welded wire cages with wood roofs. The property sat about two blocks from U.S. Highway No. 10 and near Northern Pacific Railway tracks and Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad tracks. Preston Mill Company engaged in logging operations in the adjacent area. Early in May 1951, the company began constructing a road approximately two and one-quarter miles southwest of the mink ranch and twenty-five hundred feet above it along Rattlesnake Ledge. To build the road, the company used explosives, setting off blasts twice daily at noon and the end of the workday, with charges usually limited to fifty pounds and occasionally reaching one hundred pounds. The whelping season for mink begins about May 1 and lasts about two and one-half weeks, during which mothers are highly excitable and may kill their kittens if disturbed by noises or vibrations. Roy A. Peterson, the ranch manager, observed that the blasting caused tremendous vibrations that rattled boxes on the cages, leading mother mink to run back and forth and kill their young. Before the season progressed far, thirty-five or forty kittens had been killed. Peterson informed the manager of Preston Mill Company about the losses. Although no request was made to stop the blasting, the company reduced the amount of explosives per shot from nineteen or twenty sticks to fourteen sticks. Officials of the company noted that halting road construction during the whelping period would have been impractical due to scheduling and expense concerns. Foster filed suit against Preston Mill Company seeking damages only for losses occurring after the company received notice of the effects on the mink. After a trial to the court without a jury on a second amended complaint alleging absolute liability and alternatively nuisance, the trial court entered judgment for Foster in the amount of $1,953.68 based on absolute liability for post-notice damages. The court found no public nuisance, and Foster conceded that the trial court had ruled in the company's favor on the nuisance claim. Preston Mill Company appealed the judgment.
View caseClassification turns on the species rather than any individual animal's tameness or training. Courts consider whether the animal naturally seeks freedom, whether it is indigenous to the area, and whether it bears markings or exhibits behavior showing domestication.
No. Mere pursuit or sighting gives no property right. Ownership requires actual possession that deprives the animal of its natural liberty, such as through nets, snares, or other means that prevent escape.
Supporting sources
A state may regulate capture and hunting of wild animals, but it cannot impose discriminatory fees or limits that violate the privileges and immunities clause without an independent justification unrelated to mere ownership of the resource.
Supporting sources
A possessor is strictly liable for harm that results from a dangerous propensity characteristic of the animal's class, even if the possessor exercised utmost care. Liability does not extend to harm from an escaped animal that has returned to its natural state in the locality.
…by, and in the view of, the person who originally found, started, chased it, and was on the point of seizing it. Occupancy in wild animals can be acquired only by possession, but such possession does not signify manucaption, though it must be of such a kind as by nets, snares or other means, as to so circumvent the creature…