TACOMA — Add this to the list of life’s great questions: Is a pig a hog? It might seem silly, but that simple definition is at the heart of a courtroom drama that’s been playing out for months and remains unresolved — at least in the eyes of the law. The saga continues today, with a hearing scheduled for Tacoma Municipal Court.
It started in July 2006 when a Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department inspector sent Judson Morris III a letter informing Morris that he was not permitted to keep a hog within the city limits of Tacoma.
The inspector, Harold Withrow, followed up with visits to Morris’ house, and more letters, each time informing Morris that keeping a hog violated Tacoma city ordinance.
Chapter 5.32 of the Tacoma Municipal Code, titled “Hogs,” states that “the keeping of a hog or hogs within the city of Tacoma is hereby declared to be a public nuisance.” Exceptions are made for slaughterhouses and stockyards.
At first, Morris said he removed the animal or was looking for a new home for the pig, a Vietnamese potbelly named Pig-pig. Morris spoke briefly with a reporter to arrange a meeting with Pig-pig, but later canceled the appointment.
When Pig-pig remained on the property, Withrow eventually sent the case to the city prosecutor for charging.
The crime: Keeping a hog.
Morris fought the charge. He was appointed a public defender who mounted a successful argument that the city ordinance bans hogs, but Morris doesn’t have a “hog.”
He has a “pig.”
The lawyer, Gaurav Sharma, even had a signed affidavit from a veterinarian to prove it. The vet, Tim Gintz, said under the penalty of perjury that he “examined the animal in question and conclude that it is a sow, (a female potbelly pig) and not a hog, (a male pig that has been castrated). As defined in Black’s Veterinary dictionary.”
Not so fast, said the city’s attorney, Charles Lee. Lee argued that the city’s ordinance was not intended to be gender specific, that city ordinances pertaining to dogs, fowl and rabbits do not permit one gender and ban the other, and that “hog” and “pig” and “swine” are all interchangeable terms.
“It is clear that the Tacoma Municipal Code forbids all hogs both male and female and a quick reference of any common dictionary would make it clear that a reasonable person of the community would be able to know the common meaning of the word ‘hog’ meant all hogs, pigs and swine,” Lee wrote in response to Morris’ motion to dismiss the case.
The lawyers argued during a court hearing in December about the definition of “hog,” citing definitions from different dictionaries.
According to a transcript, Sharma told Judge Arthur Emery, “There’s really not a case law on this telling the court exactly whether a hog is a …”
It was too much for Emery.
“Why do you do this to me?” the judge said.
“… A hog or a pig,” Sharma continued.
Later, in a January hearing, Sharma told the judge that Morris’ pig is popular with his neighbors.
“The neighbors love the pig. They talk to the pig,” Sharma said.
“What do they use, pig Latin?” the judge asked.
In the end, Emery sided with Morris, saying that although Tacoma’s municipal code states that keeping a hog within the city limits is a public nuisance, “it doesn’t tell you what a ‘hog’ or ‘hogs’ is,” Emery said. “Furthermore, this ordinance was passed in 1980 but was based on a statute enacted in 1912.”
Emery decided that for the purposes of Tacoma’s law, a Vietnamese potbelly pig is a pet, not a hog.
Tacoma appealed the judge’s decision to Superior Court, where Judge Susan Serko reversed the lower court ruling last month and ordered the case sent back to Tacoma Municipal Court. A hearing is scheduled for today.
“The question of whether a female pig is a hog is an issue of fact,” Serko declared.
Indeed.
Pig-pig — and the Western world — can only wait for an answer.
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