New York, NY – The claims of a tiger owner who sued New York city and police for searching his apartment without a warrant to confiscate his pet 450-pound Siberian tiger are tantamount to “chutzpah,” a federal judge said in a ruling obtained that dismissed the case.
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U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein dismissed a lawsuit brought by Antoine Yates, whom authorities discovered in 2003 was hiding a 10-foot-long tiger named “Ming” and a 6-foot alligator called “Al” inside his fifth floor apartment.
Yates, who was mauled and hospitalized by the tiger he had raised since it was a cub, claimed his constitutional rights had been violated by police searches.
Yates was sentenced to five months in prison for reckless endangerment in 2004, the same year he brought the charges against the city.
Judge Stein said that while “the word chutzpah” — a Yiddish term meaning unbelievable gall or audacity — was now “vastly overused” in the legal world, in the case brought by Yates “it is a most appropriate term to use”.