Harvard law professor Steven M. Wise predicts a suit claiming something like false imprisonment. The probable plaintiff would be a chimpanzee or bonobo (small, long-limbed chimp), represented by a court-appointed guardian. The defendant might be, say, a roadside zoo.

At the Great Ape Project International in Worcester, Mass., Executive Director Paul Waldau predicts apes' rights will evolve in two stages: an interim period in which they would continue to live in captivity but with enforceable legal rights, followed by a return to nature.

Behind both visions is a growing movement to scrap the current relationship between people and animals that are smart enough to appreciate the difference between being someone's property and having their own liberties.

Battles are being waged on many fronts.

Some -- such as a recommended San Francisco ordinance to designate pet-keepers as guardians rather than owners -- are dramatic but purely symbolic. All agree that the proposed law would have no teeth.

But others are subtly revolutionary.

For example, in Los Angeles County, the Animal Legal Defense Fund wants to advocate for Moe, a 32-year-old backyard chimp, and is asking to be appointed his guardian ad litem. West Covina seized Moe for biting someone. Moe's owner and the city turned to the 650-attorney Legal Defense Fund for help in deciding what to do, said Joyce Tischler, the organization's executive director.

As guardian ad litem, the fund's job would be to research Moe's "best interest" and advocate his legal rights in court. Courts often appoint such guardians for children and mentally disabled people.

"Moe is not interested in voting or (freedom from) sexual harassment," Tischler says. "Moe has interests that an adult male chimpanzee has." Those would include freedom from bodily harm and, perhaps, the right to socialize with other chimps, she says.

It's not a far step from a Virginia judge's ruling in 1997 that decided a messy custody case "in the best interest of Grady, the cat."

Kovar Gregory had received Grady from a friend, but Gregory's roommate, Andrew Zovko, had taken care of the animal.

When the lease ran out, Grady and Zovko moved out together. Gregory charged Zovko with petty larceny. Grady was seized as evidence. The criminal charge was dropped, and the cat was returned to Gregory. But then Zovko filed a civil suit for custody -- and won.

"From what I have seen, Grady would be better off with Mr. Zovko," said Arlington Circuit Court Judge Benjamin Kendrick, allowing the pair to "go, with my blessing."

A similar case is set for trial this summer in Santa Ana. C. Brooks Brann is suing former girlfriend Patricia Dalby for Guinness, a Rottweiler.

Dalby, who also claims ownership, reportedly is arguing that Guinness has bonded with her Rottweiler, Roxie, and they should not be separated.

Dalby's claim is on the cutting edge.

However, Brann's less radical-sounding position could have broader significance in the short run. He wants the court to assess punitive damages against Dalby.

Even some animal-rights skeptics say it's time to change the law on what someone can be forced to pay for taking or harming a pet.

Under current law, a pet's value to its owner is calculated the same as a table's, says Lawrence C. Levine, a professor at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. Lose Fido or the kitchen table, and you can sue for the replacement cost only -- no punitive damages, no compensation for emotional distress. That's about $750 in the case of Leo, the bichon frise snatched from Sara McBurnett's car in the infamous San Jose road rage case. The unidentified perpetrator threw Leo into traffic, killing him.

"Certainly if you had intentional wrongdoing, it seems absurd that someone should be allowed to recover the replacement value only" -- be the pet "an ordinary Rover or Whiskers" or a bichon frise, Levine says.

In a 1981 case, a Hawaii judge awarded a family $1,000 for emotional distress after its boxer, Princess, died of heat prostration while in state quarantine.

Robert Newman, a member of the Animal Legal Defense Fund in Orange County, says he's drafting a bill to let California pet owners sue for emotional distress and punitive damages. It would be a step, he says, toward ending the legal classification of pets as property.

Newman is thinking of asking Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Sheila Kuehl to carry it.

Kuehl was unaware of the proposal. But she says, "I believe there is a growing sense that we, as a species in charge, have to examine how we protect animals."

She views setting more comprehensive standards for human behavior toward animals as the starting point and currently is carrying a bill to prohibit inhumane killing at live animal markets.

But Kuehl calls recognition of animals' intrinsic rights "a hundred-year struggle."

If the law isn't ready, Wise is. He thinks chimps and bonobos are entitled to "legal personhood" now because science knows enough about their minds, though he says a lawsuit may be 10 years in the future.

Wise's new book, "Rattling the Cage," has been called "the animals' Magna Carta" by Jane Goodall, the famous primate researcher.

The rights of other animals also should be recognized, the books says, if and when they are found to possess "autonomy," the ability to form beliefs and desires and then to act on them. In other words, to have minds.

The rights Wise wants to grant are those that serve the animals' fundamental interests -- certainly liberty and bodily integrity, maybe freedom to reproduce and keep their offspring.

And maybe a lot more.

Socializing with humans "seems to ignite an explosion in cognitive powers in (apes') minds," much as it does in children, Wise said in an interview.

Knowing that, he asks, do we have an obligation to educate them? He doesn't know the answer.