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Louisville, KY-- In Defense of Animals (IDA), Animal
Protection Institute (API), The Trixie Foundation, and seventeen other
co-plaintiffs have joined forces to file a class action lawsuit
demanding that Kentucky comply with state law that mandates every
county within the Commonwealth to employ a dog warden and to establish
and maintain a dog pound.
Amazingly, scores of
counties in Kentucky do not have a dog pound, and of the counties that
do, many are nothing more than shabby, run-down death camps in which
dogs languish in squalor while waiting to die, often being euthanized
by gunshot. The class action lawsuit seeks to end these barbaric
and unlawful conditions by forcing Kentucky to establish and maintain
dog pounds in every county and to establish minimum standards of care
for the shelters.
"Individuals running
private rescue organizations are being forced to take in and care for
hundreds of animals because the Commonwealth of Kentucky is not
complying with the laws mandated by the General Assembly," said Elliot
Katz, DVM, president of IDA. "It's a tragedy, not only because
thousands of dogs are being neglected and treated like disposable
commodities, but also because these private organizations are taking
on the State's financial burden of housing, feeding and caring for the
animals."
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The
lawsuit stems from a 1990 incident in which Elliot County, KY, failed
and refused to comply with statutory requirements to provide a shelter
for stray, injured, neglected, abused or unwanted dogs. The
Trixie Foundation, a no-kill shelter and rescue organization that
continually accepts dogs from Elliot County, sought to obtain proper
enforcement of the law, but County officials and the Commissioner of
the Kentucky Department of Agriculture have repeatedly failed and
refused to comply. It is estimated that The Trixie Foundation
will expend upwards of $850,000 of private money to care for the dogs
over their lifetime.
"It is
outlandish and ridiculous that just because I am a compassionate and
concerned person dedicated to helping animals I am forced to take on
the State's mandated responsibilities," said Randy Skaggs, Founder of
The Trixie Foundation. "There are dogs literally dying in the
streets and Kentucky's government is not lifting a finger to help
them. The infrastructure is already here, we just need
government officials to live up to the law, otherwise, thousands of
dogs are going to continually die because there is no place for them
to live."
Copies
of the lawsuit are available by contacting IDA.
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