BB's Stock Haven

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Taser settles suit $500,000.00

http://www.tmnews.com/articles/2005/01/19/sections/news/news85.txt
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On a different note, here's an old article about animal cruelty:

.VOTIER: Yes, the footage depicted in very graphic detail what the animal experienced immediately after it was shot, when it was being winched in to the side of, sorry to the bows of the catcher ship. And the violent thrashing that took place when the animal was actually electrocuted. It seems to me that there were three stages to the electrocution. The first discharge of electricity caused the animal to thrash in the water. Then there was the sort of second second stage where the animal seemed to go stiff with paralysis as its muscles were being fibrillated and going into spasm. Then the final stage, the animal would appear to be limp, but not necessarily dead, because a whale, of course has a brain which is supremely adapted to diving, which means that it requires less oxygen than a land mammal to function. So throughout the whole process, the animal could have been fully conscious of what what was happening and indeed at the end of it, when the gunner declared the animal dead, it might not have been dead, merely immobile.
HARRIS: How many harpoonings did you watch and what percentage of those involved what you would call an inhumane death?
VOTIER: I witnessed 30 harpoonings, and I would say about 55% of those harpooning s resulted in the electric shock process being given.
HARRIS: The Institute brought a case against you in a Tokyo Court, what was the result of the court case?
VOTIER: Damages of 3 million yen were awarded to the Institute against me, but nothing was awarded in costs. I feel that the amounts are significant given the Institute had wanted 10 million yen in damages and 20 million yen in costs. So in the event the judge only decided to award one tenth of what they were asking for and my feeling is that the judge was sending a clear message to the Institute that the case should not have been brought to Court at all.
HARRIS: Now, I'm interested, why did you sell the footage to television companies and give it to animal welfare organisations?
VOTIER: I realised that I was possibly, well in fact I was the only person, outside of the Japanese whaling industry who knew full well the full extent of what was going on in the Antarctic Ocean, and had a full understanding of what the animals were going through. I simply felt that I had a moral obligation to get that message out in order that pressure brought through the International Whaling Commission on Japan to get electrocution stopped. Clearly, I couldn't have initiated that sequence of events without releasing the footage, so I had to.



http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:eLlkm4hx3lcJ:whales7.tripod.com/policies/oneworld.html+footage+...