A Kodo Update
 
Hello all, just home from court.  Kodo has recieved a 48 hour stay of
execution pending an appeal to be filed in Lansing Mi. appeals court.  Judge
Caprathe has decided that in the CDC guidelines, Section B paragraph 6 it
says "Prior Vaccination of an animal MAY NOT PRECLUDE the necessity for
euthanasia and testing if the period of virus shedding is unknown for that
species.
 
Now here's the glitch.  The may not preclude is being inturpreted as the
fact that they must euthanize kodo.  It's all in the intupretation and tonal
inflection on those three words.  may not = can not in the judges opinion
and the opinion of animal control etc.
 
State of Michigan Department of Health department head, (I can't recall her
name right now) is a well known ferret hater.  It's also her interpetation
of the CDC and her policy that is being used by Animal Control currently.
 
The point was brought out in court today, and recognized, that individuals,
individual counties or any other government entity can not make their own
"laws" (calling them policy) and enforce them in lieu of the real law (which
is what they're trying to do in this case).
 
I just got off the phone with Dr. Charles Rupprecht who has explained to me
that the "spirit" of the writing of the CDC added those exact words so that
the rest of the paragraph would\could apply for case by case analysis.  Our
small minded politicians can't see that, they only see what will support
thier fellow employees.
 
Dr. Rupprecht is bound by his job as "non committal" in legal battles in
different states or areas (quite understandably) but was extremely
informative with me on the phone.  He is forbidden to talk ot attorneys or
judges or anyone concerning laws for their areas.  He did however inform me
that Suzanne Jenkins, the head of the NASPHV COMMITTEE would be able to help
so I'm diligently attempting to contact her.
 
As it stands at the moment, we are going to have to fly "rabies experts"
into Michigan to testify as to the effectiveness of IMRAB-3, put them up
etc. to get this resolved.  Guess what, it's lots and lots of money to do
this and I can't afford it, so we're up the creek there too.
 
The ferret people here in Michigan staged a protest in Lansing on the state
capitol steps today (we love you ALL)!!!  We are under the belief that this
did more good than expected.  In the midst of closing arguments and
rebuttals the judge's secretary entered the courtroom and whispered
something to the judge.  He cut my attorney off in mid sentence saying that
he'd heard enough and was going to render his decision which he did and
announced the restraining order was granted for 48 hours only.  I have to
believe that someone in Lansing had to have called and ORDERED that
decision.  I firmly believe it didn't come of his own free will and/or
rational judgement.  The other side of this is that Kodo can not be murdered
before 5PM Friday.  Are they going to pay for a special curior to transport
his head to the Health Department and pay overtime to someone to stay and
test him, or are they going to invalidate the tests and freeze his head til
Monday???  Good questions I think!!
 
I'll fill you all in as I learn more.  I'm not sure what the next step is
right now, we're waiting on our attorney to call us back and tell us.
 
Carrowor
 
Robert Jacobs
 
[Moderator's note: Jenkins is not exactly a friend.  I've compiled a bunch
of posts about her collected from FML back-issues.  If anyone is interested
please ask the LISTSERVer to SEND FERRET JENKINS (I already forwarded to a
few key people.)  BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 1927]