Atlanta Humane Society Loses both Libel Suits - Mills and Harkins Kick Garrett’s Butt
After bouncing around from court to court for four years, lawsuits filed by the Atlanta Humane Society and its director, Bill Garrett, against two women who criticized the organization, were dismissed by the Georgia Court of Appeals as having no merit. The Appeals Court concluded that the cases should never have gotten past the trial court phase, and that both suits should have been dismissed by the judges in a summary judgement.
It all began in November 2001, when WSB-TV aired a Whistleblower Report critical of the AHS’s management of the Fulton County Animal Shelter. The report claimed that AHS inflated its adoption figures, lied about having a 24 hour pet hospital and pet ambulances, and failed to properly investigate animal cruelty cases. Barbara Harkins, a former AHS employee, appeared on the report and spoke about inconsistencies in the claims made by AHS about the services they offered and the way things actually were.
After watching the report on television, Kathi Mills, a cat rescuer and operator of kittyvillage.com, a website devoted to finding homes for homeless cats, went online to a members-only Yahoo! group chat room for people in the local rescue community. It is a place where they can trade information, advice, news and gossip. Everyone in the room was hot that night after watching the news report.
Members of the rescue community were unhappy with many of the policies of AHS, including their unwillingness to spay or neuter animals before adoption to ensure that they would not reproduce after adoption, and their refusal to scan for microchips or chip animals before adoption. But the big source of bitterness was the way AHS ran the Fulton County Shelter. The biggest complaints were that AHS would not allow animals to be adopted from the shelter, that they would not let other rescue groups take animals out of the shelter in order to find homes for them, and that they killed far too many animals. Their own records showed that of the dogs and cats brought into the shelter and not recovered by the owners, 94% were killed.
In a posting on the chat site, Mills was critical of Atlanta Humane Society, and especially of Bill Garrett, referring to him as “Mr. Kill”, stating that he was “evil”, and in the most inflammatory remark, said that he “was not worthy to lick the dog and cat poop off our shoes.” A bit much, but hardly libel. She also called for the Atlanta animal welfare community to “unite in ending his long and tragic career.”
As it turned out, one member of the group was a mole, or someone who likes to cause trouble, or possibly just someone who seeks favor by sucking up to people with influence. For whatever reason, she forwarded Kathi Mills’s postings to Garrett. Shortly afterward, both Mills and Harkins were notified that they were being sued for libel by both Garrett and the Atlanta Humane Society.
As a journalism major in college, Kathi Mills had learned about the first amendment and libel law. She knew her remarks were not libelous, and she was angry at the idea of being sued. Her first response was to alert the media and make this a public event. She contacted every newspaper and TV news department she could and told her story. Soon the AHS was looking at a lot of people with cameras and answering the kind of questions they weren’t used to hearing. They had picked a fight with someone who knew how to fight back.
Now AHS had a public relations problem. What many people felt was a tactic to intimidate its critics and get them to take back their remarks and apologize had blown up in their faces. Public sentiment leaned toward the two women. Editorials in the Atlanta newspaper urged the AHS to drop the lawsuits, but they would not do so. Maybe they felt they would lose face if they backed out, or maybe they thought they would win. Much like Brer Rabbit in his dispute with the tar baby, it would have been better if they had never thrown that first punch.
Barbara Harkins kept a low profile during the proceedings, but Kathi Mills was going to keep this matter as public as possible. If there was a reporter or TV camera around, she would make herself available for some interesting and pointed comments. When Garrett complained that her remarks had caused a sizable drop in donations to the AHS, she pointed out that it was his own damn fault for making the remarks public. If he had not sued her, no one would have ever heard what she said except the members of the chat room, and it would have been forgotten the next day.
Mills and Harkins both challenged the suits as illegal Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suits as they are known. SLAPP suits are usually brought by larger, financially stronger organizations against individuals who oppose or criticize their actions, threatening the opponents with financial ruin if they do not back down. They are usually successful, or were before the state governments began making them illegal. Now, if a lawsuit is determined to be a SLAPP suit, it is supposed to be dismissed.
The case bounced around the court system for far longer than anyone expected, going all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court and back down to the Court of Appeals, with each side, usually the Atlanta Humane Society, appealing any ruling that went against them. Outside of the courtroom, there was a lot going on.
The lawsuits infuriated and galvanized the rescue community and united them on one goal – to get the Atlanta Humane Society out of the Fulton County Animal Shelter. Many of the people involved in animal rescue had talked about the need for this for some time, but now the effort began in earnest. They began to petition the Fulton County Commission with letters, e-mail, petitions, and phone calls. They spoke up at commission meetings, and made sure that the media was made aware of their complaints. Soon the only press the AHS was getting was bad press.
At first the commissioners tried to ignore the issue, but as more and more members of the public became aware and got involved, the commission realized that there was a problem and they would have to deal with it. They decided to put the contract to manage the shelter up for competitive bid, and established new rules and policies to be followed by whomever got the contract. Shortly after, Atlanta Humane Society informed the commission that it was no longer interested in managing the shelter. It wasn’t quite over; there was a little more intrigue in the coming months, but in the end Southern Hope Humane Society was awarded the contract and has been managing the shelter ever since. They have introduced modern practices, encouraged adoptions, follow a firm spay-neuter policy, and have reduced the kill-rate dramatically.
In a strange twist that only served to make what was going on seem even more bizarre, and confirmed that you should never put anything on the internet that you would not want used against you, Bill Garrett sent an e-mail to some of his close friends across the country. Mills obtained a copy of it during the discovery process for the lawsuit and posted it on her website. Soon a lot of people were reading it. In it, Garrett referred to his critics as “zealots” and compared them to the 9/11 terrorists who flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and suggested that, figuratively speaking, someone had flown a plane into his building. It left many people wondering if someone had forgotten to take someone’s medication.
In the rulings that were handed down, Atlanta Humane Society and Garrett were ordered to pay both Barbara Harkins and Kathi Mills $75,000 for their legal expenses. This is in addition to its own legal fees, which amounted to almost $500,000 for 2002-2004, with 2005 still to come. How much of this expense is the result of the lawsuits is unknown, but before the lawsuits began, AHS averaged less than $10,000 in legal expenses annually. PAWS Atlanta, formerly Dekalb Humane Society, a comparable if somewhat smaller organization, doesn’t even list any legal expenses in its financial statements for the last three years.
Bill Garrett retired from the Atlanta Humane Society at the end of February, ending an era that saw big changes for the organization. He took over a poorly managed rescue group with no money and built it into a well-funded organization with income in the millions and a pile of assets. He had a lot of supporters who thought he did a lot of good, and a lot of critics who felt that he didn’t do enough. As one critic said, “Atlanta Humane has more money and does less with it than any comparable rescue group.” If his final act as director was to blow three-quarters of a million dollars (our estimate) of his employer’s money on legal fees in a foolish, pointless and misguided attempt to punish two women who criticized him, you would have to call that a pretty impressive exit.