Dog-related
Federal judge David Down of Portage County, Wisconsin, on June 2 reduced to $300,000 an April jury award of $940,000 to county dog warden Beverly Kirkhart as an alleged victim of gender discrimination when she was rejected for permanent appointment to the post in 1994––after she had been a member of the dog warden’s staff on an interim basis since 1984, and had been acting dog warden for about six months. A man, Jon S. Barber, was hired instead, at $3.00 more per hour. Kirkhart was then fired in 1996, because of purported physical disabilities. Kirkhart returned to work as dog warden on May 17. Barber was offered a job in another county department.
Upholding the verdicts of a Calumet County Circuit Court jury and the 2nd District Court of Appeals that guard dogs can be dangerous weapons, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on June 18 affirmed the conviction of Forest Junction resident Jene Bodoh for negligent handling of a deadly weapon in the June 1995 mauling of Greg Burns, 14, by Bodoh’s two Rottweilers.
Patricia Mumper, 57, a member of the Town of Holland Animal Control Commission, pleaded innocent on June 6 to allegedly burning the dilapidated four-run wooden shed that formerly served as the dog pound in Holland, Massachusetts. The shed erupted in flames on June 1, soon after Mumper argued vehemently at a town meeting that a new pound should be built, reportedly threatening to “embarrass” the town if it continued to balk. Holland dogcatcher Christian Petersen told the town in his May annual report that the pound was in “deplorable condition.” Explained Dog Adoption Network president Stephen Dean, to Jeff Donn of Associated Press, “The only thing worse than being a lost dog in Holland was being a found dog––and being put there.”
National Greyhound Adoption Program volunteers Robert C. Reeves, 30, and Franz J. Schneider, 45, of Bonita Springs, Florida, were arrested on June 11 in Howard County, Maryland, for allegedly transporting 20 former racing dogs in a poorly ventilated homemade trailer, in which two of the dogs died en route to the NGAP adoption shelter in Philadelphia. “They didn’t drive fast enough,” NGAP founder/director David Wolf reportedly told Naples Daily News staff writer Mari Kelli Bridges. “That was their biggest mistake.” Reeves, reported Bridges, said “If I could get those two dogs back, I would. But I saved 18 dogs.”
Information, please
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must disclose to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, based in Missoula, Montana, the names of all 2,500 people who commented on the proposed reintroduction of grizzly bears to the Bitterroot range in Idaho, ruled U.S. District Judge for the D.C. Circuit Stanley Sporkin on June 28. The Fish and Wildlife Service claimed that commenters from the Bitterroots might be harrassed if other people knew where they stood. Sporkin agreed, however, that the Freedom of Information Act requires that citizens be able to see how public comments are used in decision-making. USFWS is still withholding the names, however, while deciding whether to appeal.
Forest Guardians, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on June 1 sued in an attempt to force the U.S. Forest Service to disclose information pertaining to holders of grazing leases who use their leases as collateral to obtain bank loans. The suit is believed to be preliminary to an action in which Forest Guardians will contend that a lease to use public land is not private property and the Forest Service should therefore should not allow ranchers to use leases as collateral. New Mexico public lands ranchers contend that such a suit, if won, could force them out of business.
Activism
Progressive Animal Welfare Society staffer Will Anderson on June 4 accepted an award of $64,500 for alleged false arrest and loss of both a camera and the visual portion of videotape, after he was accosted by four deputies while documenting a fatal injury to a horse during an August 1996 running of the Omak Suicide Race, in which horses are repeatedly raced down a steep hill and across a river during the annual Omak Stampede rodeo. Okanogan County is to pay Anderson $50,000; former Omak Stampede director Ted Huber, who allegedly threw Anderson’s cameras into the river, is to pay $12,500; and the Omak Stampede is to pay $2,000.
Last Chance For Animals both won and lost rounds in San Diego Superior Court on June 11, as Judge John S. Meyer told the Fashion Valley shopping mall that a rule against protesters telling customers not to patronize stores in the mall is unconstitutional, but refused to vacate a restraining order that the mall obtained in November 1998 to exclude antifur demonstrators. LCA was not involved in the protest that caused the mall management to seek the restraining order, but was named as a restrained party.
In another First Amendment case, Last Chance for Animals on June 17 announced that it is suing the Coulston Foundation, the world’s largest supplier of chimpanzees for biomedical research, alleging that Coulston unlawfully used the threat of litigation to intimidate a World Wide Web hosting service into cancelling the LCA account. Coulston argues that the very name of the LCA site about its facilities, http://www.coulstonkillschimps.com, is defamatory. “
About 30 hog farmers and members of pork grower groups filled the courtroom,” the Akron Beacon Journal reported of the June 9 arraignment of St. Paris hog farmer and vocational agriculture teacher Steven L. Jenkins, 41, on cruelty charges. Jenkins on May 6 allegedly bashed several runt piglets on the head and took them to Graham High School in St. Paris for dissection. One piglet, however, survived. A student bashed the piglet on the school parking lot pavement. Students who saw the bashing summoned teacher Molly Fearing, 36, who rushed the piglet to a veterinary clinic for injection euthanasia, then called PETA. Outrage built via the Internet for 12 days before local authorities filed charges. “If this goes against the teacher,” Champaign County hog farmer Bob Corbett said, “it could be devastating to the commercial livestock business.” But Urbana City prosecutor Gil Weithman, handling the case, told the Beacon Journal that he doesn’t see head-bashing, per se, as cruelty; that the issue is only that Jenkins didn’t bash hard enough to kill the piglet quickly.
New Jersey Coalition for Animals president Angela Skiendziel, 36, was arrested for alleged “possession of a prohibited weapon––specifically a stun-gun” on May 29 during a protest against a rodeo held in Montgomery, New Jersey. As in a 1998 Wisconsin case brought against Chicago activist Marla Rose, who was acquitted, the purported “stun-gun” was actually an electric cattle prod which was displayed as a prop, Skiendziel told ANIMAL PEOPLE––and, she said, it seemed to be identical to the device that one of the rodeo personnel was caught on videotape using. At NJCA urging, the town of Montgomery only one week earlier adopted an ordinance forbidding the use of electrical shocking devices in rodeos. But the rodeo left town before NJCA could bring the video evidence of violation to the attention of law enforcement, Skiendziel said.
A six-member jury in Gallatin County Justice Court declared on June 22 that they were unable to reach a verdict in the trial of Buffalo Field Campaign protester Pete Leusch, 32. Leusch was charged with trespassing on January 7 for trying to padlock himself to a bison capture pen, built and managed by the Montana Department of Livestock, but located on the property of West Yellowstone resident Dale Koelzer.