Will HSUS Be Bullhooked for Millions in Legal Fees?

The ongoing legal drama between a set of animal rights groups and Feld Entertainment, which owns the Ringling Bros. circus, has taken a saucy new turn. And it looks like the animal rights activists and their lawyers could soon be neck-deep in elephant dung.

First, a quick review. Animal rights activists brought a lawsuit against Feld in 2000 alleging elephant abuse in violation of the Endangered Species Act, with former Feld trainer Tom Rider as a key witness and plaintiff. After years of legal wrangling, D.C. federal judge Emmet Sullivan threw out the lawsuit in late 2009, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing and—more importantly—that Rider was “essentially a paid plaintiff and fact witness who is not credible” after receiving at least $190,000 from the animal rights cabal, his sole source of income as the case made its way through the courts. A US Court of Appeals recently upheld the dismissal. (Read the full opinion here.)

Feld returned fire, filing a racketeering lawsuit that hinges on the court’s findings. How the alleged scheme worked, according to Sullivan’s 2009 ruling, was essentially that counsel for plaintiffs' law firm Meyer, Glitzenstein, and Crystal ran a nonprofit called the “Wildlife Advocacy Project” (WAP) and other groups funneled money through it to Rider. (Rider also allegedly received payments directly from animal rights group plaintiffs and through MGC.)

HSUS fits in because the Fund for Animals was a plaintiff in the suit against Feld, and merged with HSUS in 2004/2005. Fund chief—now an HSUS executive—Michael Markarian also apparently fits into the equation, according to Sullivan’s ruling:

Beginning in December 2001 and continuing until at least the beginning of 2008, the organizational plaintiffs made payments to WAP for the purpose of funding Mr. Rider. While FFA/HSUS (Mr. Markarian) testified that it was not certain whether WAP used its “donations” for other purposes as well, this testimony is undermined by the documents underlying FFA/HSUS’s “donations,” which indicate that the money was specifically for use in connection with this litigation. FFA/HSUS’s testimony also is questionable given that in 2003, plaintiffs’ counsel, Ms. Meyer, specifically sent an email to the representatives of the organizational plaintiffs, including Mr. Markarian, requesting funds to support Mr. Rider’s advocacy efforts regarding the elephants and the lawsuit, and expressly suggesting that the funds for Mr. Rider could be contributed to WAP so that they would be tax deductible.

Also named in the racketeering lawsuit are HSUS attorney Kimberly Ockene and HSUS Senior Vice President Jonathan Lovvorn, both of whom used to work at Meyer, Glitzenstein, and Crystal and were plaintiff attorneys during the Endangered Species Act complaint. In fact, Feld’s attorneys allege that money was taken out of an HSUS bank account and earmarked for Rider.

So what’s new?

Last week Feld’s attorneys filed a motion in the original case—not the racketeering case—demanding that the plaintiffs pay for legal fees that Feld accrued, totaling an estimated $20 million. Defending a lawsuit for a decade tends to be an expensive endeavor, after all.

This could be a double-whammy for HSUS. It could be on the hook for a good chunk of the $20 million in legal fees. Additionally, Feld is seeking treble damages under RICO against HSUS and the other defendants in the separate racketeering lawsuit—so add another $60 million to the potential pot.

And that’s not all.

Feld’s attorneys are also asking the court to officially sanction the attorneys for their conduct. They allege that “Not only did counsel bring fraudulent (Rider) and frivolous (API) claims, they doggedly pursued them for more than eleven years.” Feld alleges that the plaintiffs knew that their key witness was unreliable and “each and every step of the way counsel had an opportunity to drop either Rider or API or both (and put an end to FEI’s mounting legal expenses). Yet they did not. Instead, they embraced Rider’s lies and API’s meritless and hollow allegations…”

And since the court is apparently allowed to hold the attorneys jointly and severally liable for the estimated $20 million in legal fees (if the court rules the plaintiffs should pay it), that means HSUS, Lovvorn, and Ockene, among others, could have quite the bill, along with a bench-slap to go with it.

We encourage you to read the whole motion for all the intricacies and details. When there’s a ruling, we’ll be sure you’re among the first to know.

When Pigs Sue

In a new Weekly Standard article, Wesley Smith examines animal rights activists’ long-term goal to overthrow our legal system by giving “personhood” status to animals. And his timing couldn’t be more impeccable: We recently sat in on the Maryland States Bar Association’s “Animal Law” seminar. Two HSUS attorneys spoke, along with a few more (openly) radical advocates.

What’s at stake? Quite a lot.

Current law holds that animals are property. Your car, your house, and your chair can’t sue you. Neither can animals. Animal welfare is enshrined in law to ensure good treatment. But animals aren’t considered people and therefore don’t have standing to be party in a lawsuit, despite PETA’s lamest efforts.

The day’s first speaker was local attorney Sean Day, a hardcore believer in legal “rights” for animals. In fact, Day won’t take any clients who agree with current law that animals are property.

Day’s view was in the minority among speakers, many of whom were simply pointing out how to work within the legal system, as opposed to radicalizing it. Even HSUS’s first speaker stuck to a moderate script of discussing evidence collection during animal seizures.

But later in the day, things got interesting. We were treated to a dandy propaganda-fest from the general counsel for Compassion Over Killing. (Day used to be pro bono counsel for COK.) COK’s counsel went through how animal agriculture is cruel—par for the course. Sharing her panel was an HSUS attorney who seemed moderate by comparison, discussing how HSUS can “get creative” in using current federal law to file lawsuits.

We say “seemed moderate” because that’s the big joke: The variance between HSUS and COK is a distinction without a difference. Consider that Carter Dillard was a COK lawyer before joining HSUS. COK co-founder Paul Shapiro runs HSUS’s farm-animal campaign. Former COK president Miyun Park was an HSUS VP when she stated that HSUS’s goal is to “get rid of the entire [animal agriculture] industry.” COK seems to be a breeding ground (activist mill?) for future HSUS personnel.

The two groups may speak differently in public, but they’re on Team Animal Rights with PETA, ALDF, and others. Birds of a feather fly together. HSUS personnel sat on a panel with a counsel from COK, Farm Sanctuary, and PETA a few years back.  HSUS has actually written about this giving legal “rights” to animals in past fundraising material.

Skeptics might say this just circumstantial and a bit dated. Fortunately, we have the transcript of a panel that HSUS Senior VP Jonthan Lovvorn sat on in 2006. Lovvorn runs HSUS’s legal activism. (You might remember him as a defendant in an ongoing racketeering lawsuit.)

The panel was on animal standing. Lovvorn was joined by his former colleague, Katherine Meyer, and Joyce Tischler, founder of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. We highly advise you read the whole thing, but we’ll print the meatiest parts here.

Here’s Meyer and Lovvorn responding to an audience question about how slow the process of legal change—moving away from the concept of animals as property—was going (emphasis added):

Meyer: Everything everybody is doing is helpful to that cause. This is a movement. We would all like it to go faster. There is a lot to do, but Steve Wise’s books, and the works of other people who are writing about the issues, are very important.

All of the cases that Jonathan [Lovvorn] is handling, cases we are handling for groups, all of it adds up to what David [Cassuto] was saying: we need to make these actions politically incorrect, we have to generate that public outrage. We have to make it politically incorrect to do these things, such as considering animals as property….

With these farming issues—it is very important what HSUS is doing, as are other groups—we about talking about billions of animals. You have to do it incrementally. This is not going to divulge any great secret, but a lot of us here in this room are looking for the right sets of facts to bring those first guardian ad litem cases. This is where we are going. The way you get there is by bringing other cases first. …

Lovvorn: Certainly, the situation with regard to the property status of animals, the courts, Article III, and our ability to get what we want is frustrating. The problem is, right now, no member of Congress would even introduce a resolution saying that animals are not property.

It seems quite clear to us that this crew is united in its outlook, and practical in its means, chipping away slowly. Meyer, Lovvorn, and their ilk all want to eventually be the legal guardians for animals—especially farm animals. The practical effects of this will be for HSUS to sue Old MacDonald on behalf of his ducks and chickens, singing E-I-E-I-O to the tofu bar.

And if you think the animal rights crowd will be satisfied with eliminating meat, milk, and eggs, think again. Some wacky lawyer could sue on behalf of even pets—excuse us, companion animals—to “liberate” them from their human “slaveholders.” We wouldn’t put it past PETA to sue blind people on “behalf” of seeing-eye dogs.

We can joke about how silly it seems, but it is a very real possibility with dedicated people working towards these ends. HSUS had 3 lawyers when Wayne Pacelle took over in 2004. In 2010, Pacelle stated they had “about 50” on staff, not to mention a network of pro bono attorneys.

Can we afford to let them win?

Image © CartoonStock

HSUS “Expertise” Slammed From the Bench

Part of the big kerfuffle over the Humane Society of the United States’ agreement with the United Egg Producers is over the notion that HSUS should have a say in how farmers go about their business. It’d be one thing for, say, a mainstream veterinary group to influence such legislation—vets are a part of the farm, too. Not only is an animal-rights group that doesn’t believe in using animals for food far from a stakeholder, however, but no one among HSUS’s leaders is even a farmer.

That, of course, doesn’t prevent HSUS from appearing in the media as if it’s some kind of expert in farming or other animal issues. Reporters want someone to call, and HSUS is happy to oblige. But thanks to a tip, we found one situation in which HSUS’s self-claimed expertise didn’t pass scrutiny.

In 2007 HSUS staffer John “J.P.” Goodwin (a man with a long arrest record) traveled to Dane County, Wisconsin to testify in an animal-fighting case. Only one small hitch: The judge wouldn’t let him testify.

Why? Because the judge found Goodwin is an activist—not a qualified expert witness. Here’s what the judge said. (Click here to read the whole back-and-forth between the lawyers for the prosecution and the defense. This judge’s ruling begins on the page numbered 148.)

I look at Mr. Goodwin’s qualifications, and it seems to me that they belong in the world of issue advocacy….[I]n looking at his qualifications, I don’t see anything in the way of training with respect to animal physiology, for example…

If I want to understand what and whether there is animal fighting constituting mistreatment in this case, I don’t think I can look to Mr. Goodwin to give me an opinion on that because he just doesn’t have the requisite expertise and training.

So there you have it. There’s a clear line between an activist and an expert.

(Interesting side note: Goodwin told the court, “We have 10 million members.” That’s just not true. HSUS has a self-claimed “constituency” that’s (now) about 11 million people, but they’re not all members.)

We’d bet this finding of non-expertise would apply to HSUS in other areas, too. Looking over HSUS’s leadership, we see plenty of longtime animal rights activists like CEO Wayne Pacelle and Michael Markarian. But we don’t see a single veterinarian. And HSUS’s board only has 2 vets out of 26 members—and one of those is a longtime fringe activist.

When you think about it, HSUS activists don’t need to be animal experts. (And in many ways they aren't.) They just need to be experts in the “conflict industry.” Judging from their ability to endlessly gin up controversy and beg for dollars, they’ve earned more than a few advanced degrees.