Zoo owners, facing ‘financial ruin,’ argue for house arrest instead of jail or fines

The homeowners of eastern Iowa’s shuttered Cricket Hollow Zoo are hoping to steer clear of jail time and a stiff fiscal penalty for contempt of court docket.

Earlier this 12 months, the Iowa Supreme Court docket turned down zoo owners Pamela and Thomas Sellner’s endeavours to set apart a judge’s obtaining that they ended up in contempt for obtaining refused a court docket order to surrender the animals at their roadside attraction in Manchester.

The contempt ruling calls for the Sellners to pay $70,000 in fines. If payments are not designed towards the high-quality, the Sellners will have to provide a one-day jail sentence for each and every animal that was not recovered from their zoo, for a overall of 140 times.

With their appeals fatigued, the Sellners not too long ago filed a movement with the court docket, inquiring the judge in the circumstance to modify a payment system associated to the great or let them serve their jail sentence at household.

The pair argues  that like several farmers, they “are asset wealthy but are dollars very poor,” and a requirement that they fork out $1,000 for every thirty day period toward the contempt fine would “cause substantial hardship on their farm as very well as their day-to-day living costs.”

The option to paying the fine — jail time — would “leave their farm without having anyone to treatment for the livestock and crops,” they point out in their motion. The great would also leave then “destitute and in financial spoil,” they incorporate, and they are proposing the month to month payments be reduced to $100 for each thirty day period.

If the court chooses to retain the monthly payments at $1,000, the Sellners argue, they must be authorized to forgo any payments and provide the ordered jail time at home whilst less than household arrest.

Animal welfare advocates oppose modifications

The Animal Authorized Protection Fund, which assisted initiate the civil situation that resulted in Cricket Hollow Zoo getting shut down, is opposing the concept.

“The Sellners are at it yet again,” legal professionals for the ALDF argue in a formal resistance to the Sellners’ movement. They argue the couple has supplied no evidence that $1,000 regular monthly payments would produce a hardship and they say property arrest “would be no punishment at all” for contempt.

“After all, house arrest would suggest letting the Sellners to provide their sentence at the similar place in which they shockingly mistreated hundreds of animals for yrs, willfully disobeyed this court’s injunction buy, and where they presently invest significantly of their time,” the ALDF lawyers argue.

The courtroom has however to rule on the Sellners’ movement. At a listening to previous 7 days, Pamela Sellner argued that 5 bears and two cougars she experienced refused to flip more than in December 2019 are now located at a wild animal sanctuary and so the contempt finding towards her and her spouse really should be purged.

The ALDF argues if not and claims the couple’s possess data display the animals now at the sanctuary are not the exact animals that the court tried to eliminate from Cricket Hollow Zoo in 2019.

Sellners could experience $691,000 in other costs

Aside from the penalty for contempt, the Sellners may perhaps be facing an even bigger money legal responsibility.

In December 2019, right after they lost the court docket battle to preserve the zoo open, the ALDF and other plaintiffs who initiated the situation requested the court docket to award them attorneys’ charges of $539,800, furthermore costs associated to the relocation of zoo animals, all to be paid by the Sellners. The court has nonetheless to rule on that movement.

Past 7 days, an lawyer for the plaintiffs submitted detect with the courtroom that in addition to the $539,800 in attorneys’ charges, the plaintiffs are now searching for reimbursement for expenses totaling $150,937.

If all of people costs and expenses are authorized by the court and assessed to the Sellners, the few would be searching at a legal responsibility of just about $691,000.

The contempt-of-courtroom situation stems from a getting that the Sellners falsified data and deliberately defied a 2019 courtroom purchase that they relinquish custody of all the animals in their treatment.

That 2019 purchase grew out of the lawsuits submitted by the ALDF commencing in 2016, alleging various violations of Iowa’s animal neglect regulations. A decide sooner or later ruled against the Sellners and proficiently requested the zoo shut with a lot of of the animals to be relocated to wildlife sanctuaries in other states.

But when animal-rescue businesses arrived at the eastern Iowa zoo, they located lots of of the animals were being lacking, concealed, lifeless or bought. That triggered the contempt-of-courtroom proceedings before Iowa District Court Judge Monica Zrinyi Ackley.

In ruling very last drop that the Sellners have been in contempt, the decide wrote that the couple’s mistreatment of animals at the zoo was orchestrated and intentional, and that they “knew what they ended up obligated to do in buy to be compliant” with her 2019 purchase but experienced as an alternative picked to consider “deliberate action” in defiance of that get.

The lacking animals provided five bears, two mountain lions, a camel, a fox, a wolf, nine guinea pigs and hedgehogs, 13 lizards, 7 tortoises and turtles, at least 55 birds and six kinkajous.