by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

I know very little about fish. When I was a tyke, my parents used to rent a house in China Cove for the summer, and I would fish off the Marine Lab pier with a dropline. Using mussels that I pried from the pilings as bait, I would catch all manner of relatively short and unknown species. I would then gut and clean them and my mother would make a big production of cooking them for dinner. (Looking back, I suspect she may have switched “my” fish for those from the local market, but at the time that didn’t occur to me.)

Later, when I was old enough for summer camp, I learned to fly fish. Since my flies rarely hit the water as they were first snagged by my hat, shirt, pants, or a nearby tree, actual catches were, in a word, rare. I “retired” from the sport early to the relief of all those who were in snagging distance of me.

We do have goldfish in a pond at home, but those don’t really count as fish except to nocturnal raccoons or visiting egrets. Other than that, fish have not been a big part of my life.

Nor do I know much about manicuring except that nail salons are cropping up everywhere. There are two small shopping centers within a few blocks of our house, and both have nail salons. When a salon in one of the centers went out of business, it was quickly replaced by still another, probably with the same employees. Whenever I would walk or drive by, they seemed packed and busy with rows of chairs filled with patrons with outstretched arms whose feet were sitting in something that looked uncomfortably like detached toilet bowls. I am not sure what goes on in those bowls, but I am told they have something to do with pedicures.

So imagine my surprise when the United States Supreme Court announced it rejected hearing an appeal from the Arizona Court of Appeals in a case that involved both fish and pedicures, a combination I would not have thought possible.

It turns out that the Arizona State Board of Cosmetology has, among its other duties, adopted “necessary and proper” rules “including sanitary and safety standards for the practice of nail technology.” (In my mind, fingernails and technology don’t even belong in the same sentence, but what do I know?)

One Cindy Vong, and what I assume is her company, La Vie, LLC, came to the attention of those sharp-eyed cosmetology people because she was filling those bowls with fish. Not just any fish but a species called Garra rufa, which apparently is Turkish for “we suck toes.”

I am going to quote from the court of appeals opinion, not because it is unusually eloquent, but to prove I am not making this up:

The customer’s feet were then placed in a tank containing water and garra rufa or chin chin fish that removed skin from the feet.

According to my Internet research, the chin chin fish is an imposter, which is a shame as I was thinking that if the garra rufa work on the toes, the chin chin fish would be a natural for barbershops.

In any event, the cosmetology police are in charge of all equipment or tools used in pedicures and have rules and procedures for disinfecting those tools or pieces of equipment. It was a short intellectual leap for them to say that the fish were tools, and it was impossible to disinfect the fish without killing them. It is a little bit of a stretch for me to call fish equipment, but if I could get to that point, I would have to agree that the disinfection process would be terminal.

Ms. Vong responded by stating that the rules were adopted “at a time when the use of fish in the manner I have proposed, was not known or contemplated.” Hard to argue with that!

Ms. Vong challenged the Board’s jurisdiction, as, in her view, fish pedicures did not constitute the practice of cosmetology, aesthetics, or nail technology. (I can’t figure out what they do constitute, but I digress.)

The court of appeals found that cleaning feet with fish was “a particular type of nail technology” and therefore the Board’s classification of them as tools was “rational.” I think that was the court’s way of saying, “we have no idea what to call toe sucking by fish, but we think it is a really icky idea.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but as soon as I finish writing this, I am going up in my attic to find my old dropline, get some bait, then head over to Happy Nails for a day of fishing.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.