Animal Welfare Act cases

March 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

The USDA Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service on February 19
amended a 1998 complaint against the
Coulston Foundation, of Alamogordo,
New Mexico, for alleged violations of the
Animal Welfare Act to address “grave concerns
regarding the circumstances under
which several chimps recently died,” USDA
undersecretary for regulatory programs
Michael V. Dunn told media. The amended
complaint claims the Coulston Foundation
failed to establish and maintain a program of
adequate veterinary care, and did not make
itself aware of known side effects of veterinary
drugs. Despite a record of repeated
AWA violations resulting in chimp fatalities,
dating at least to 1995, and an allegedly high
rate of veterinary staff turnover, the Air
Force in August 1998 awarded the Coulston
Foundation permanent custody of 111 former
members of the NASA space chimp colony.

Mary Chipperfield convicted of cruelty

March 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

HAMPSHIRE, U.K.––Circus
trainer Mary Cawley Chipperfield, 61,
and her husband Roger Cawley were on
January 26, 1999 convicted, respectively,
of 12 counts of cruelty toward a
young chimpanzee named Trudi and a
sick elephant.
One of their staff, Stephen
Gillis, was convicted in November
1998 on related charges for allegedly
beating an elephant with an iron bar,
shovel, broom, and pitchfork.

Animals in bondage: the hoarding mind

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

LYLES, Tenn.; ANAMOSA,
Iowa; SALT LAKE CITY, Utah– – Near
Lyles, Tennessee, the shelterless Hickman
County Humane Society just before Christmas
1998 seized 299 dogs, 38 horses, and various
cats from an alleged puppy mill reportedly
owned by one Patricia Adkisson.
The site was littered, rescuers said,
with the remains of dead dogs.
On January 1, 1999, hoping to keep
a developing neglect case from becoming selfperpetuating,
Florida Humane Society volunteers
cleaned the home of widower Terry
Ruppel, 70, of Lighthouse Point, who surrendered
37 cats after neighbors complained
about filth and stench. Ruppel and his wife of
47 years exhausted their savings trying to fix
up an old house, Fort Lauderdale SunSentinel
staff writer Robert George explained.
Then Ruppel had a stroke, skin cancer, and
kidney cancer, and in August 1998 his wife
died of a sudden heart attack.

Yerkes pays 2/3 of original OSHA fine in 1997 researcher death

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Emory University, of Atlanta, on
December 2 announced it had agreed to pay a
fine of $66,400, two-thirds of the amount
originally assessed by the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration, in negotiated
settlement of charges resulting from the
December 1997 death of Yerkes Regional
Primate Research Center researcher
Elizabeth Griffin, 22.
Griffin died from a herpes B viral
infection after a caged monkey she was moving
apparently spat in her eye. Griffin was not
wearing eye protection. It was the first documented
case of herpes B infection through the
eye membranes. As well as lowering the fine,
OSHA also dropped language from the settlement
agreement which stated Yerkes had
“willfully” broken safety rules.

ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT ET AL

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

British home secretary Jack Straw,
whose position is analagous to that of the U.S.
Speaker of the House, on December 17 recommended
legislation to expand anti-terrorist legislation
which would both strengthen the rights of
accused persons to a prompt public hearing, and
extend laws now pertaining only to international
violence and the “troubles” in Northern Ireland
to cover any “use of serious violence against persons
or property, or the threat to use such violence
to intimidate or coerce a government, the
public, or any section of the public for political,
religious, or ideological ends.” Although the
proposed legislation does not specifically mention
violence associated with animal rights
activism, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and
London Times all prominently made the link.
Authorities recorded approximately 800 incidents
of vandalism and arson undertaken in
Britain in the name of animal rights during 1997.

Half a million disappears in alleged lost pet scam

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Arizona grand jury charges
filed in mid-October 1998 are reportedly
pending against Britney Lee Marx, 34,
who allegedly bilked six acquaintances out
of a total of $500,000 between January 1997
and January 1998 through a scheme to offer
cash rewards for missing pets under the
name Protect Animals Through Angels
[PATA, easily confused with PETA.] “One
of the victims, Dale Lumb, said in a lawsuit
he filed in May 1998 that he lost about
$400,000 to Marx, a former friend. She
denied his claims,” wrote Mark Shaffer of
The Arizona Republic. Shaffer identified
Marx as a former stage impersonator of
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, who
“changed her name from Cheryl Cusella in
1989,” after serving 38 days in jail and
drawing seven years on probation for two
counts of fraud resulting from allegations
that she defrauded investors while purportedly
promoting a Barbara Mandrell c o ncert
which never happened. Reportedly
ordered to pay more than $50,000 in restitution,
Cusella/Marx actually “paid about
$32,000, according to court records,” said
Shaffer, who added that she did actually
pay one $10,000 reward “to a woman who
found a lost poodle belonging to a friend of
hers.”

$250,000 jury award in dog shooting

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

A federal jury in Richmond, California, on
December 30 ruled that Richmond police officers violated the
Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted search and seizure
by shooting an arthritic 11-year-old mixed breed dog named
Champ belonging to the James Fuller family in 1992, after
entering the Fuller yard, with guns drawn, in hot pursuit of a
fleeing suspect in an unrelated case. The jury awarded the
Fuller family $255,000 in costs and punitive damages.
The only comparable previous verdict in the A N IMAL
PEOPLE files was $5,000 awarded to Henry Blackwell
and his daughter LaShay by a Minneapolis jury in March 1998,
because police in 1995 shot their pet pit bull terrier Gippy as
many as 15 times while intervening in a neighborhood dispute.
Henry Blackwell’s son Henry Jr. reportedly tried to set the dog
on other parties to the dispute, but the dog hadn’t bitten anyone.

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel
on December 31, 1998 rejected a suit filed by
the Mountain States Legal Foundation,
Colorado Cattlemen’s Association,
Colorado Woolgrowers, and Colorado
Outfitters Association, which sought to keep
the Colorado Division of Wildlife from reintroducing
lynx by contending that the state is
improperly managing a federal species recovery
program. Mountain States Legal
Foundation attorney William Pendley said he
would take the case on to the 10th Circuit
Court of Appeals, and would seek an emergency
injunction against any lynx releases
while the matter remains in litigation.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
continues to tout the so-called “no surprises”
Multiple Species Conservation Program his
office negotiated in 1994 with San Diego
developers as a model for endangered species
conservation on privately owned habitat, but
the California Native Plant Society, San
Diego Audubon Society, and San Diego
Herpetological Society in a December 27
lawsuit claim the Multiple Species
Conservation Program is not adequately protecting
habitat. They cite as case in point the
recent bulldozing of a wetland which included
about 60 vernal pools, home to endangered
San Diego fairy shrimp.

Trapped in deep muck

December 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1998:

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – – Margaret
Kolar, manager of the San Francisco Bay National
Wildlife Refuge at Redwood City, California, told
Marilee Enge of the San Jose Mercury-News i n
November that due to the November 3 passage of
the California Anti-Trapping Initiative, she has
indefinitely postponed a scheduled trapping program
which was supposed to protect endangered species at
the refuge––even though one of the framers of the
initiative question, Humane Society of the U.S. vice
president Wayne Pacelle, said the program wasn’t
affected.
“If [leghold trapping] is the only option, it
is appropriate for the protection of endangered
species,” Pacelle said.

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