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Cruelty-to-Elephants Suit Against Private Zoo Is Not a SLAPP, Court of Appeal Declares
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Sixth District Court of Appeal has reversed an order granting a private zoo’s anti-SLAPP motion and an order granting it $96,656.68 in attorney fees and costs because any protected speech in which it engaged was incidental to its operations.
Bringing the action against Monterey Zoological Society, Inc. and its founder/president, Charlie Sammut, based on alleged cruelty to elephants was People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc. (“PETA”). It complained of the zoo’s use of canes in controlling elephants and use of “free contact” which Justice Cynthia C. Lie defined in Thursday’s unpublished opinion as “a management and training practice in which keepers share the same unrestricted space with the elephants.”
Monterey Superior Court Judge Thomas Wills granted the anti-SLAPP motion based on the use of scripts by zoo employees in telling persons touring the facility about elephants.
The zoo argued in its appellate brief:
“This lawsuit is not about consumer fraud, but, rather, an attempt to shut down the Zoo’s ability to share its important messages with the public….By directly targeting the elephant presentations and the acts that enable and further them…PETA sought to completely cut off the Zoo’s ability to share its important elephant messages with the public.”
Lie said in her opinion reinstating PETA’s lawsuit that “not all conduct undertaken by Monterey Zoo is entitled to anti-SLAPP protection merely because the Zoo may on occasion engage in constitutionally protected speech.”
She added:
“Defendants supply no reason that they could not continue to offer the same educational content to all zoo visitors without hands-on/canes-on direction by keepers in free contact with the elephants.”
The justice noted that “[b]ecause defendants have not met their prima facie burden on the first step of the anti-SLAPP inquiry”—whether the action is predicated on protected speech—“we need not reach PETA’s claim of minimal merit.”
The case is PETA v. Monterey Zoological Society, H048546.
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