There's been a change of judges in the USARK v. USFWS lawsuit about listing big constrictors as injurious species.

The case was recently transferred to Judge Raymond Daniel Moss. He will be the third judge assigned to the case. In August, we had been informed that the case had been transferred from Judge Sullivan to the Honorable Reggie B. Walton. In the case of both transfers, it appears to be simply a matter of trying to distribute the judicial workload.

On November 14, 2014, Judge Moss received his judicial commission to serve as a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Upon his confirmation, Judge Moss left a large, prestigious DC law firm where he had chaired the Regulatory and Government Affairs Department. This is his first position as a judge, although upon graduation from law school he was a law clerk for a federal district court judge and then for Justice Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Judge Moss has spent considerably more time in private practice than working for the government. Hopefully, his private practice experience in regulatory and government affairs will help him be able to also see the issues from our perspective.

In March 2014, West Virginia enacted the Dangerous Wild Animal (DWA) law, which was lobbied for heavily by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and its affiliated WV organizations.

Similar bills had previously failed in WV, dying in legislative committee and once progressing far enough to be vetoed by WV’s Governor. Although the state’s Governor vetoed a similar DWA bill in 2012, which veto occurred after the Zanesville animal release in 2011, he signed the 2014 DWA bill.

The Zanesville Connection

WV’s 2014 DWA Bill (HB 4393) is frequently justified by the 2011 release of 50 animals in Zanesville, Ohio (consisting of lions, tigers, bears and wolves). As covered in Esquire, the released animals had been accumulated via purchase and “rescue” by Terry Thompson and were housed in outdoor cages on his 73-acre farm.

Forty-nine of the released animals were killed by law enforcement on or near the farm on the evening of the release, and the remaining tiger was killed on the farm the next morning. It has been reported that officers closed the doors of several cages in which a few large cats had remained, only to discover that every cage had been cut open in addition to having its door left open. Thompson’s partially eaten body was discovered on the farm with bolt cutters and a pistol lying nearby.

The police theorized that before shooting himself in the head, Thompson cut open the sides of all the cages, as well as, opening all the cage doors. In Thompson's house, however, two monkeys, three leopards and a small bear remained alive in cages.