Pets Alive Blog

Liberty Humane: The problem with murder (Getting SLAPPed)

So we’re getting sued. Long time Pets Alive supporters know that’s nothing new. We’re on both sides of these lawsuits on a fairly regular basis (I actually FORGOT about a lawsuit that we’ve been involved in for a couple of years and was reminded recently). Shrug. Whatever.

I am fortunate enough to have among my friends an excellent attorney who specializes in civil rights lawsuits. He is a member of the board of Pets Alive, and he’s a stand up guy. I wanted to put a picture here of him with his dog (a big ol’ Pit Bull of course), but if he doesn’t call me back before I push the publish button then you’re getting the gorky lawyer picture instead.  Buster ->

This is a very interesting lawsuit. Basically the poor, beleaguered, altruistic, sweet, wonderful, morally centered board of the Liberty Humane Society is being harassed by the unwashed, cretinous, violent, threatening extremist mob. You can’t read this tripe from the largely brain-dead Melissa Hayes, “reporter” for the Star-Ledger without laughing out loud:

In a statement the board said members and shelter staff have been subjected “to a constant barrage of threats, slanderous insults and blatantly false information designed to intimidate us into relinquishing control of the Liberty Humane Society.”

“We support and defend everyone’s right to freedom of speech, but issuing death threats and smearing our reputations with vulgar lies and distortions is not speech — it is harassment,” the statement said. “We filed this suit to protect ourselves and restore the good reputation of the Liberty Humane Society.”

Ok…let’s stop right here for a moment.

A constant barrage. Remember…we don’t have megaphones that we are screaming into 24/7 in front of the building. THEY ARE SUING OVER A FACEBOOK PAGE. So I sat there and refreshed the Facebook page for about 30 minutes today. There is, on average, a post every 3.2 minutes.

So that means that in a course of a day there are approximately 200 – 300 posts, including people responding to every post (I discounted a little figuring the posts drop off after midnight). I get between 250 and 400 emails a day. Does that mean I get a barrage of emails?

Furthermore, if we were printing these posts, crumpling them up and throwing them at the board members I could see where 400 of them could be annoying. I have an easy fix for this barrage. There’s a little x up in the right-hand corner of the web page. Click it. Problem solved.

Anyway…they are getting a constant barrage of threats, slanderous insults, and blatantly false information…

Ok….so there has to be at least 100 to 200 threats out there somewhere, right? I know Melissa “Would you like fries with that?” Hayes and the geniuses at the Star-Ledger would print them on the front page all day every day, so I looked around for all of these threats. There aren’t ANY that I could see in the complaint, and I only found one anywhere, ironically in another publication, the Hudson Reporter. Ready? Here it is:

Wherever you go we will find you!! You are the hunted now. We played nice and you wanted to play hard.  Now We Will Hunt You!,” the post said.

Um…where’s the beef?  Are the poor, overworked, underpaid, articulate and forthcoming members of the board saying that this person meant it literally?  Seriously?  This is it?  I don’t know what to say.  In order to even email these people you have to hunt down the email address.  They are hiding from us.  I absolutely believe that is what this person meant.  So I figured I’d run to the Facebook page and check out the context.

Oh.  It’s not there.   According to the Hudson Reporter
The item has since been removed and replaced with a comment in which the author says he does not condone violence.

Ah, so the “author” realized that he (or she) may have said something that could have been misconstrued by people trying anything they possibly can to get the focus off their alleged misdeeds and on to something less substantive, so he or she decided to pull the comment anyway and state that he or she doesn’t condone violence.

Sounds good to me.  No harm done.

Well, actually apparently John Hanuusack is waiting by his door for someone with a hockey mask on and a chain saw in one hand and an ice pick in the other to bust through his door.  That wouldn’t end well if it happened in my house, because I have dogs.    There’s the first irony of today — hey John, maybe you should have taken one home instead of killing him.  He could protect you from us violent thugs who may actually WRITE SOMETHING about you.  Careful…we type pretty fast.  A key may fly off and hit you.

So that covers the “threats.”  Not sure we could find a judge who wouldn’t laugh at that one.

They provided a copy of the lawsuit to their propaganda organization, the Jersey Journal (Star-Ledger), and you can look at it for yourself here.

To help things along I’m going to put down the insults in one place and we can talk about them.  These are taken from ACTUAL POSTS ON THE ACTUAL FACEBOOK SITE.  WARNING: CONTENT MAY BE INAPPROPRIATE FOR IDIOTS.

Hmmmm…let’s take a quick look through these and see the common threads.  Murder, killer, etc. appear 15 times.

Wow!  a barrage.

Now let’s talk about slanderous and blatantly false. I am certainly no attorney (but I’ll bet my knowledge of the law against either Mr. or Mrs. Diana Jeffrey), but to be slander it has to be:

1.  Oral (whoops!)

2.  A claim that shows someone in a negative light. (think we have that covered)

3.  False.

And now we come to the problem with murder.  What exactly does it mean to murder?  To a layperson (a non-lawyer), murder means basically kill intentionally and with premeditation (planning and intent).

So murder IS killing.  Again, for us laypeople the words are synonymous.

I have a list.  On that list are 30 dogs that were killed by Liberty Humane.  That makes them killers.  Period.  So that means calling them killers isn’t slanderous.  Did they PLAN or INTEND to kill any of the animals?  I could make a pretty good argument that many of these dogs were murdered.  Particularly egregious would be Fuller, who was given 5 temperament tests, had adopters who had seen the tests and wanted the dog.  He was killed anyway.

By the above definition I believe that was murder.

So I see nothing there that’s slanderous.  And as far as blatantly false is concerned, the word blatant means completely obvious, and there’s just no way that’s true.

But we did something far more heinous.  We referenced a Guns N Roses song.  GASP.  Someone posted “Welcome to the Jungle.”  Get it?  Animals?  Jungle?  Duh?  No actually it was a death threat.

“WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE”  VIDEO. SHOWS RIOTING, POLICE IN RIOT GEAR, A PERSON IN RESTRAINTS (LIKE A MENTAL PATIENT ABOUT TO UNDERGO ELECTRIC SHOCK THERAPY), WHILE LYRIC SAY “YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE/YOUR’E IN THE JUNGLE BABY/YOU’RE GOING TO DIE” AND THEN SHOWS A BODY COVERED WITH A SHEET BEING WHEELED OUT ON A STRETCHER

It does?  Jeez…I never noticed that.  I liked the video from The Dead Pool when Jim Carrey was lip synching this song.  Axyl Rose says it’s about…Seattle.  It’s about how small Seattle is but you can still get what you want.  I still remember what David Lee Roth said when the millionth person asked him why he wrote a song.  He said “Why the f–k do you think?  To make money.”  C’mon.  This is ridiculous.

This isn’t enough for the genius Board of LHS.  They want to reach for more.  I could go on and on but I’m getting bored with this.

This lawsuit is obviously a SLAPP lawsuit, which is A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.

Know what I think of that?

Most of the postings were simply expressions of opinion from ordinary citizens and taxpayers, although in hyperbolic and sometimes scatological language, of LHS’ board  and the organization they lead.

Jersey City has delegated statutory duties with regard to animal control to the Humane Society.  When the Humane Society signed a contract with the city, it was appointed to act as an agent of the Board of Health concerning certain public health regulations.

If the Humane Society were not subject to the same types of criticism that governmental entities would be subject to it would frustrate the ability of the general public to complain and otherwise effectuate necessary and desirable change when those services fall below standards which the public demands.

Oh…I’m sorry…that wasn’t me.  That was a Georgia court spanking the Atlanta Humane Society for suing someone who did just about exactly what we did.  I just changed Atlanta Humane Society to Liberty Humane Society and shuffled some stuff around.

BTW…I think Liberty Humane wins the hyperbole contest, though their lap dogs (with apologies to dogs everywhere) in the media will give them a pass on it.

Wonder how this will turn out?