Photo: David Slater

A smelly, screeching animal that throws its faecal material all over the place.

This might be the way that many litigants think about their adversaries in court but for David Slater this was literally true. His case in the United States was listed as Naruto v Slater and related to the famous picture (right) of a macaque monkey taking a selfie.

When Slater was working in the Indonesian jungle in 2008 Naruto, the monkey in question, picked up the camera and snapped a picture of herself.

There had already been a lot of controversy around the photos before September 2015 when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took both Slater and the publisher of a book of wildlife photography to court arguing that it was in fact Naruto herself who should be assigned copyright!

The courts in the United States were, at the very least, scpetical of the arguments presented and in the lower courts it was held that “if Congress and the president intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue, they could, and should, have said so plainly.”

However by July this year it was revealed that Slater was struggling to meet legal costs and indeed this week he settled the case with PETA by agreeing to pay 25% of all future revenue to wildlife funds that help to protect monkeys like Naruto.

In many ways it is a shame that the case ended when it did. From a legal point of view it would have been interesting to see the arguments being presented at a higher court but the case also represents a much broader warning about the legal system in general.

When large pressure groups target individuals the balance of power in terms of resources and ability to fight a drawn-out legal battle is heavily skewed and so the adversarial system of countries like the UK and, in this case, the U.S. will always favour the rich.

This case is slightly different in the sense that PETA are not some vast conglomerate trying to take over the world in an Erin Brokovich type case but rather an organisation whose slogan is “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” Nevertheless the point remains and PETA always knew that they were able to outspend Slater.

They may not have won the legal argument at any stage but that is of little consequence when you can grind the other side into submission anyway.