No person may treat any animal, whether belonging to the person or another, in a cruel manner. This section does not prohibit normal and accepted veterinary practices.
Wis. Stat. § 951.02
Mistreating animals
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case 358 Wis. 2d 212 - State v. Jeremiah J. Purtell (2014)
Most recently applied in 91 F. Supp. 3d 1032 - Flint v. City of Milwaukee (March 2015)
1973 c. 314; 1987 a. 332 s. 54; Stats. 1987 s. 951.02; 1993 a. 486; 2011 a. 32
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Wisconsin State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Wisconsin statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.