[FEL-L] Declawed Tiger---Mauled tiger owner loses fight over cat

[Brian Werner]

  Mauled tiger owner loses fight over cat


      Man kept 450-pound tiger, 6-foot alligator in apartment

*NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The claims of a tiger owner who sued New York 
city and police for searching his apartment without a warrant to 
confiscate his pet 450-pound Siberian tiger are tantamount to 
"chutzpah," a federal judge said in a ruling obtained Monday that 
dismissed the case.*

U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein dismissed a lawsuit brought by Antoine 
Yates, whom authorities discovered in 2003 was hiding a 10-foot-long 
tiger named "Ming" and a 6-foot alligator called "Al" inside his fifth 
floor apartment.

Yates, who was mauled and hospitalized by the tiger he had raised since 
it was a cub, claimed his constitutional rights had been violated by 
police searches.

Ming was eventually shipped to an animal refuge in Ohio but Yates has 
said he hoped to get the tiger back and open his own animal sanctuary in 
upstate New York.

Yates was sentenced to five months in prison for reckless endangerment 
in 2004, the same year he brought the charges against the city.

Stein said that while "the word chutzpah" -- a Yiddish term meaning 
unbelievable gall or audacity -- was now "vastly overused" in the legal 
world, in the case brought by Yates "it is a most appropriate term to use".

A lawyer for Yates did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Police learned Yates had been keeping the wild animals as pets after an 
anonymous tip led them to find Yates inside his apartment, "screaming 
and crying in pain" from wounds including a gash below one knee that 
exposed the bone, the ruling said.

Although Yates then told officers he had been bitten by a pit bull dog, 
a neighbor said Yates had shown a full-grown tiger to her daughter and 
that large amounts of urine had fallen below into her apartment, the 
ruling said.

Yates later told police he had purchased Ming from a woman in Minnesota 
for $3,500 and had raised Al the alligator for eight years since it was 
a hatchling.

When Yates returned to his apartment a week after the mauling, he 
claimed missing items included $7,000 in cash, $30,000 in jewelry and a 
brown, three-to-four pound pet rabbit.

"The whereabouts of the rabbit have not been ascertained, but there is 
no indication in the record that Al the alligator was questioned in that 
regard," the judge noted. "The court suggests he may be more 
knowledgeable on this issue than he disgorged to date."

Copyright 2006 Reuters 
<http://www.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html#Reuters>. All rights 
reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or 
redistributed.

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