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A question for the lawyering types out there

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John Blackhawk

Literotica Guru
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how would a lawyer react if they met a mythical creature with human intelligence? What laws would a U.S. laywer worry about if this mythical creature had no legal identification and was afraid of being whisked away by the government?
 
What does the alien critter look like? I recall an old SF tale where a scrawny 10-foot-tall bright red semi-humanoid alien rides into town on a burro. After begging for tolerance, it turns out the red 'man' is a puppet and the (talking) burro is the alien.

As for ID papers -- they're easily acquired, assuming the alien looks fairly human. Some actual humans don't look very human, hey? If this alien looks Neanderthal, no problem.
 
Afraid if this is set in the US he/she/it will be whisked away by the government as soon as they found out about he/she/it, never to be seen again. Then again, if he/she/it was interviewed on the TV first and had it's picture and story in the papers and on the internet, the government might be hesitant to whisk he/she/it away.

And the US government would wave that phrase "National Security" in everybody's face as they hauled he/she/it away.

Just my opinion. I have no facts to back this up... Roswell... Area 51... others.
 
It depends on how visible this MC (mythical creature) is. A hydra, centaur, mer-person, winged angel or demon, might be hard to hide.

How does the lawyer encounter the MC? And what is the lawyer's specialty and strength? Does a centaur sneak into Rudy Giuliani's office seeking protection?
 
It could give rise to a lot of interesting questions.

Is an intelligent alien a "person" under the Constitution? Does the alien have rights? Due process, equal protection, free speech, right against unreasonable search and seizure?

Is an intelligent alien subject to criminal laws? Can an alien "break" the law?

Or would an alien be treated as an animal, like a piece of property? Would laws against cruelty to animals apply?

Many interesting questions.
 
John Blackhawk said:
how would a lawyer react if they met a mythical creature with human intelligence? What laws would a U.S. laywer worry about if this mythical creature had no legal identification and was afraid of being whisked away by the government?
Click to expand...

I think the biggest obstacle would be the lack of being human equates to a lack of legal standing. The second would be the spectacle created by the news media, which would spin control out of the lawyers hands pretty quickly. If I were the lawyer, my first action would be to secretly relocate the alien to a safe jurisdiction...a remote place, etc. In the US, even human immigrants are locked up, so it would be a hard sell to think something as important as an alien would escape Big Brother. Is there a way in the story to perhaps mount a public campaign that ends in the "country of choice" making an exception (or pass new laws) that would allow for the entry...if that's your goal?

And if a court battle is important to the story, it seems that the legal standing issue is the first priority.

Tricky issue to work around. Here's a snippet of info about "legal standing" from animallaw.com;

What is "Legal Standing?"

Since legal standing is defined by law as a person's right or ability to sue, and since animals are regarding only as property (and thus are without "legal standing" of their own), nobody can sue solely on behalf of an injured, abused or murdered animal.

This means a human's ability to sue is limited to proving that the defendant — in the process of abusing, injuring or killing an animal — caused injury or another form of harm to the plaintiff, a human witness. As you might surmise, any psychological damage is, to say the least, difficult to prove in court. In short, animal advocacy has been left standing in the cold, without legal standing.

The tragic irony here is that inanimate objects such as corporations, ships, estates and political bodies are classified as "persons" by law, while living, breathing, sentient beings of the animal kingdom have been abandoned by the forces of legal definition.

For more -> http://www.animallaw.com/faq.cfm
 
John Blackhawk said:
how would a lawyer react if they met a mythical creature with human intelligence?
Click to expand...
We still need to know what this mythical creature looks like. How obvious is it? Can it ever pass as human? Has it already been seen in public? How has it escaped gov't clutches so far? And why is it in USA and not elsewhere? A centaur might not be noticed in Italy.
 
Mythical creatures exist in the imagination. Why would a lawyer concern him/herself with a non-existant being? Other than the billable hours, of course.
 
twister947 said:
Mythical creatures exist in the imagination. Why would a lawyer concern him/herself with a non-existant being? Other than the billable hours, of course.
Click to expand...
Mickey Mouse has many lawyers.

A mythical critter may seek a mythical lawyer, y'know, an honest one. Let's flip the conceit. A standard USA lawyer is warped into a mythical world filled with mythical creatures, and must find a way to bill hours. How to sue a centaur?
 
All I could think of was "Illegal Alien"!
Most myths have a little bit of fact to them. Even ancient story writers knew their stories needed to be plausible in order to sell.
If a centaur shows up at a lawyer's office, it's no longer a myth.
Jenny
 
JRaven said:
All I could think of was "Illegal Alien"!
Most myths have a little bit of fact to them. Even ancient story writers knew their stories needed to be plausible in order to sell.
If a centaur shows up at a lawyer's office, it's no longer a myth.
Jenny
Click to expand...

A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until - “My God,” says a second man, “I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn.” At which point, a dimension is added which makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third dimension only spreads it thinner and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... “Look, look!” recites the crowd. “A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard​

Looking at it another way, is your centaur a billable myth?
 
JRaven said:
Most myths have a little bit of fact to them. Even ancient story writers knew their stories needed to be plausible in order to sell.
Click to expand...
Watch out for dragons devouring the sun. And beware of medusas.

If a centaur shows up at a lawyer's office, it's no longer a myth.
Click to expand...
Unless the lawyer and her office are also mythical.
 
John Blackhawk said:
how would a lawyer react if they met a mythical creature with human intelligence? What laws would a U.S. laywer worry about if this mythical creature had no legal identification and was afraid of being whisked away by the government?
Click to expand...

the alien would be whisked away regardless of what any lawyer did and it's most unlikely that any trial could would, or would be allowed to, interfere if the government argued it was a national security concern (and it would).

activist attorneys with the ACLU or National Lawyers Guild would try to have someone appointed guardian ad litem and file a petition for writ of habeas corpus. these would fail.
 
John Blackhawk said:
how would a lawyer react if they met a mythical creature with human intelligence?
Click to expand...
deRudio said:
the alien would be whisked away regardless of what any lawyer did...
Click to expand...
@deRudio: You fell into the same trap as I. It's a "mythical creature," not an 'alien.' Chimeras, medusas, dragons, unicorns, basilisks, centaurs, selkies and other mer-people, giant cyclops, kobolds, etc would all have different profiles and powers -- some might be difficult to "whisk away."

A centaur walks into an attorney's office in Tucson. What happens next?
 
Hypoxia said:
@deRudio: You fell into the same trap as I. It's a "mythical creature," not an 'alien.' Chimeras, medusas, dragons, unicorns, basilisks, centaurs, selkies and other mer-people, giant cyclops, kobolds, etc would all have different profiles and powers -- some might be difficult to "whisk away."

A centaur walks into an attorney's office in Tucson. What happens next?
Click to expand...


1. receptionist: "so, why the long face?"

2. I guess we'd have to guess why. If it's to review a stock-split agreement and no one stopped the centaur or summoned LEO, he'd probably get billed at whatever the going rate for commercial lawyers in Tuscon is, probably $400/hour and the lawyer dings him for a couple of thousand in fees.

3. if someone calls the Tucson Police, Animal Control, Arizona National Guard, Army, FBI, KAOS or SMERSH, said centaur is going to be shot and killed, and if he's only tranked or taken into custody, the feds will whisk him away and civil rights lawyers will fail to get him or her released on a habeas writ.
 
Hypoxia said:
Mickey Mouse has many lawyers.

A mythical critter may seek a mythical lawyer, y'know, an honest one. Let's flip the conceit. A standard USA lawyer is warped into a mythical world filled with mythical creatures, and must find a way to bill hours. How to sue a centaur?
Click to expand...


a good lawyer can always find work as a consigliere for the dwark mob, a fixer for the elves, state prosecutor for the orc war crimes tribunals. he can negotiate treaties with Sauron or just be an ordinary defense attorney for werewolves who, as Hunter S. Thompson observed, are also entitled to due process.

the problem is not suing a centaur, the problem is serving one.
 
yukonnights said:
I think the biggest obstacle would be the lack of being human equates to a lack of legal standing. ….
Click to expand...

shoot the brute and standing isn't an issue. but blast the beast in a state like Nevada, where the fish and game laws tell you what game you can't take, rather than a state like California, where the law says what you can kill. example, an elk wandered south from Idaho into Nevada where it was killed by a Nevada hunter. but there were no laws against taking elk in Nevada (there are no elk there), so he wasn't prosecuted. I think elk season was over in Idaho. same thing would happen with a bigfoot, or a centaur.
 
SimonDoom said:
It could give rise to a lot of interesting questions.

Is an intelligent alien a "person" under the Constitution? Does the alien have rights? Due process, equal protection, free speech, right against unreasonable search and seizure?

Is an intelligent alien subject to criminal laws? Can an alien "break" the law?

Or would an alien be treated as an animal, like a piece of property? Would laws against cruelty to animals apply?

Many interesting questions.
Click to expand...


they ain't got no rights. shoot them all. let the gods sort them out.
 
mythical creature would be considered a foreign citizen and have all the rites of a person from another country provided they are not the only one of there kind or something strange like that.

As the creatures lawyer they would have to try and get the creature diplomatic immunity and then negotiate with the government about what other rights and privileges the creature has other then basic human rights as that does not only apply to human (Some foreign leaders pets also have human writes when they travel to other country's).
 
blackmohammed said:
mythical creature would be considered a foreign citizen and have all the rites of a person from another country provided they are not the only one of there kind or something strange like that.

As the creatures lawyer they would have to try and get the creature diplomatic immunity and then negotiate with the government about what other rights and privileges the creature has other then basic human rights as that does not only apply to human (Some foreign leaders pets also have human writes when they travel to other country's).
Click to expand...

diplomatic immunity is negotiated nation to nation. if they're not human they don't have human rights. at most, some animal rights not to be slaughtered inhumanely or abused.
 
deRudio said:
[1] diplomatic immunity is negotiated nation to nation. [2] if they're not human they don't have human rights. [3] at most, some animal rights not to be slaughtered inhumanely or abused.
Click to expand...
1. Let's have the nation of Monstroso. The centaur has a passport.
2. Non-human corporations have limited human rights.
3. Trying to abuse a medusa be inadvisable.

Not knowing just which mythical creature is involved, it's hard to speculate on the relationships of creature, lawyer, and state. How do we treat Mickey Mouse, Cthulhu, Santa Claus, Medusa, Dracula, archangels, basilisks, unicorns, dryads, Baby Jesus, Ganesh, Leviathan, Pecos Bill, Apollo, selkies, and talking dogs?
 
Hypoxia said:
1. Let's have the nation of Monstroso. The centaur has a passport.
2. Non-human corporations have limited human rights.
3. Trying to abuse a medusa be inadvisable.

Not knowing just which mythical creature is involved, it's hard to speculate on the relationships of creature, lawyer, and state. How do we treat Mickey Mouse, Cthulhu, Santa Claus, Medusa, Dracula, archangels, basilisks, unicorns, dryads, Baby Jesus, Ganesh, Leviathan, Pecos Bill, Apollo, selkies, and talking dogs?
Click to expand...

corporations and other business entities have limited rights so they can own property, sue and be sued. they do not, as a rule, have privacy rights.

1. Centaur with passport: all the rights, privileges and protections of a US citizen or resident, more so if it's on a diplomatic passport.

2. Pecos Bill: US Citizen

3. Jesus: illegal alien but eligible for cancellation of removal and asylum as a member of a group persecuted by a government on the basis of religion.

4. Santa Claus: illegal alien, wanted by FAA for numberless violations of air space regulations.

5. Mickey Mouse: property of the Walt Disney Company.

6. Dryads I'll deal with personally.

7. Talking dogs, unicorns: subject to local animal control laws, very adoptable.

8. Dracula: deportable as a war criminal or for having persecuted others.

9. Apollo: illegal presence, deportable.

10. All others: to be shot on sight / shot trying to escape.
 
deRudio said:
corporations and other business entities have limited rights so they can own property, sue and be sued. they do not, as a rule, have privacy rights.
They're working on that.

1. Centaur with passport: all the rights, privileges and protections of a US citizen or resident, more so if it's on a diplomatic passport.
Do you know of any diplomatic centaurs?

2. Pecos Bill: US Citizen
Do you have a birth certificate? He might be Canadian.

3. Jesus: illegal alien but eligible for cancellation of removal and asylum as a member of a group persecuted by a government on the basis of religion.
The Church blames persecutions on a suppressed religion, not a gov't.

4. Santa Claus: illegal alien, wanted by FAA for numberless violations of air space regulations.
Has partnered with USAF for decades now. A collaborator.

5. Mickey Mouse: property of the Walt Disney Company.
What rights have an inhuman corporation and its minions?

6. Dryads I'll deal with personally.
Wuss.

7. Talking dogs, unicorns: subject to local animal control laws, very adoptable.
I bet they can talk their way out of most courts.

8. Dracula: deportable as a war criminal or for having persecuted others.
Statute of limitations.

9. Apollo: illegal presence, deportable.
Good luck with deporting a deity.

10. All others: to be shot on sight / shot trying to escape.
That's the right-winger's excuse.
Click to expand...
Set the story in New York City where mythical creatures might not be quickly noticed as *odd*. Naked dryads? Hey, they're legal. Cyclops? Some WWE clown. Baby Jesus? They have talking babies everywhere. And lawyers there will take ANY client. Just wait for the tweets.
 
Hypoxia said:
Set the story in New York City where mythical creatures might not be quickly noticed as *odd*. Naked dryads? Hey, they're legal. Cyclops? Some WWE clown. Baby Jesus? They have talking babies everywhere. And lawyers there will take ANY client. Just wait for the tweets.
Click to expand...


or San Francisco.



2. Pecos Bill: US Citizen

Do you have a birth certificate? He might be Canadian.

wouldn't necessarily have one back then, according to Halifax Fred.



3. Jesus: illegal alien but eligible for cancellation of removal and asylum as a member of a group persecuted by a government on the basis of religion.

The Church blames persecutions on a suppressed religion, not a gov't.

it was enough for asylum that the Roman government allowed the Jewish client state to persecute Him



5. Mickey Mouse: property of the Walt Disney Company.

What rights have an inhuman corporation and its minions?

right to own intellectual property, of which the mouse would be, as an avatar. alternately, the right to own any animal legal to possess, such as Mus musculus


8. Dracula: deportable as a war criminal or for having persecuted others.

Statute of limitations.

the statute would bar trial as a war criminal, but not his deportation.


10. All others: to be shot on sight / shot trying to escape.

That's the right-winger's excuse.

that's not an excuse, its a solution.
 
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