Fur Commission USA, which represents over 400 fur farms, recently issued a press release on the Jacques Ferber Inc. lawsuit against the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, the Animal Defense League, and Vegan Resistance for Liberation. Under the civil provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), Ferber alleges that these three groups as well as four named individuals engaged in a series of acts that amounted to a criminal conspiracy to interfere with a legitimate business enterprise.
As I’ve mentioned before, RICO was originally meant to help prosecutors go after legitimate businesses that were used as fronts by organized crime, but it is the civil provision of the act that has gained the most notoriety. Pro-choice groups recently won big victories in two separate civil cases against pro-life groups and individuals that advocated or approved of illegal acts against abortion clinics, but did not actually participate in such illegal acts. Juries in those cases agreed with the plaintiffs that even though the defendants did not commit illegal acts, by their advocacy of illegal acts they were part of a conspiracy that did commit such acts and as such could be held liable for the illegal acts.
The Fur Commission USA release noted that since 1995 Ferber was subjected to almost weekly protests by animal rights groups and on April 24, 1999, “vandals wearing hoods smashed the store window.” Ferber argues that the three animal rights groups and the four individuals named in the suit engaged in a pattern of harassment intended to intimidate the company and ultimately force it out of business. The Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that juries should be allowed to decide whether or not this sort of activity constitutes extortion.
Ferber might have an even stronger case than did the pro-choice groups if Fur Commission USA’s information is accurate. It quotes one of the activists named in the suit, Brett Wyker, but in a footnote at the end of its release claimed:
In January [1999], Wyker e-mailed FCUSA’s Terry Platt: “hey, what did oyu [sic] think of the Fur Farmers convention in WI? FUR IS DEAD AND YOU’LL BE SOON!”
The convention in question was the International Mink Show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where several masked animal rights activists tried to gain entrance to the show. According to Fur Commission USA, among those activists was Gary Yourofsky, an activist recently jailed in Michigan for releasing mink from a farm there, and CAFT’s John Paul Goodwin.
These sort of links between those who commit illegal acts and nominally nonviolent groups and individuals is exactly the sort of evidence that led to the pro-choice plaintiffs to win their cases. Lawyers in those cases produced evidence showing all sorts of connections between the allegedly nonviolent activists pro-life activists who did commit crimes and told the jury that it was absurd to claim that the two were not part of an organized, illegal attempt to shut down a legitimate business.
Ferber’s lawsuit is apparently at a standstill while lawyers try to find and serve the four individuals named in the lawsuit, but once that is taken care of this will be an interesting test case of the RICO statute. If it can prevail it could be the beginning of the end of common practices used by groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and others (in much the same way that pro-life groups have had to radically alter their tactics in the last decade). On the other hand, since animal rights issues have a far lower profile than abortion issues, this case might not receive nearly the same treatment as the case against the pro-life groups did, and could potentially lead to another round of judicial review of the RICO statute.