Patrick C. Lavery, the owner of Circle L Trailer Sales in Gloversville, where Tommy lives, said he heard about the petition from reporters’ telephone calls. He said from his home in Florida that he had complied with all state and federal regulations, that Tommy had a spacious cage “with tons of toys,” and that he had been trying to place him in sanctuaries, but that they had no room. He said he had rescued the chimp from his previous home, where he was badly treated.

“People ought to use common sense,” he said. Of the Nonhuman Rights Project, a group he was not aware of, he said, “If they were to see where this chimp lived for the first 30 years of his life, they would jump up and down for joy about where he is now.”

The other people who are named in the petitions being filed this week did not immediately comment.

The use of habeas corpus actions is a time-honored legal strategy for addressing unlawful imprisonment of human beings. Mr. Wise argues in a 70-plus-page memo rich with legal, scientific and philosophical references that being human is not essential to having rights. He argues that captive chimps are, in fact, enslaved, and that the same principles apply to them as to humans who were enslaved.

“This petition asks this court to issue a writ recognizing that Tommy is not a legal thing to be possessed by respondents, but rather is a cognitively complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right not to be imprisoned,” the court filing says.

Mr. Wise is not asking the courts to declare the chimps equivalent to human beings, any more than a corporation, also considered a legal person, is a human being. Because the rights group has set up a trust for all four chimps, they are already legal persons under New York law, he argues.