Animal-Rights Groups Pay Circus $25 Million for Frivolous Litigation

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), along with their co-defendants, have paid Feld Entertainment, Inc., parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® Circus, $15.75 million to settle cases stemming from a lawsuit they brought against Ringling Bros.® over the care of its Asian elephants, reported the Sarasota Herald Tribune. This historic settlement payment to Feld Entertainment ends nearly 14 years of litigation between the parties.

HSUS and animal-rights groups the Fund for Animals, Animal Welfare Institute, Born Free USA (formerly the Animal Protection Institute), the Wildlife Advocacy Project, the law firm of Meyer, Glitzenstein & Crystal, and several current and former attorneys of that firm paid the settlement for their involvement in the case brought under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that the U.S. District Court ruled was “frivolous,” “vexatious,” and “groundless and unreasonable from its inception.”

In December 2012, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), a former co-defendant in the case, settled its share of the lawsuits by paying Feld Entertainment $9.3 million. The recent settlement brings the total recovered by Feld Entertainment to more than $25 million in legal fees and expenses that the company spent in defending the ESA case, said a news release from Feld Entertainment.

“After 14 years of litigation, Feld Entertainment has been vindicated. This case was a colossal abuse of the justice system, in which the animal-rights groups and their lawyers apparently believed the ends justified the means. It also marks the first time in U.S. history when a defendant in an Endangered Species Act case was found entitled to recover attorneys’ fees against the plaintiffs due to the Court’s finding of frivolous, vexatious and unreasonable litigation,” said Feld Entertainment’s legal counsel in this matter, John Simpson, a partner with Norton Rose Fulbright’s Washington, D.C., office.

In the original ESA lawsuit, Feld Entertainment discovered the animal rights groups and their lawyers had paid over $190,000 to a former circus employee, Tom Rider, to serve as plaintiff. The Court also found that the animal-rights groups and their attorneys “sought to conceal the nature, extent and purpose of the payments” during the litigation. Their abuse of the judicial system included the issuance of a false statement under oath by Rider, assisted by his counsel, who the Court found was “the same attorney who was paying him” to participate in the litigation.

On Thursday Feld Chairman and CEO Kenneth Feld said in a statement: “We hope this settlement payment, and the various court decisions that found against these animal-rights activists and their attorneys, will deter individuals and organizations from bringing frivolous litigation like this in the future.”

We share that hope. The standard business response to harassing litigation is to settle to avoid more costs and bad publicity, rather than trusting the legal system to vindicate the innocent. But the family-run Feld Entertainment shows what companies can do when they have the courage to fight back against abusive litigation.