Deloitte & Touch Drop Huntingdon Life Sciences

Huntingdon Life Sciences announced at the end of February that its auditor, Deloitte & Touche,

. . . will not stand for reelection following completion of the 2002 audit. D&T has advised LSR [Huntingdon] that their decision was made as a result of harassment they received from animal rights extremists and not as a result of any accounting dispute, disagreement or concern with LSR.

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty quickly took credit for Deloitte & Touche’s decision, posting on the SHAC web site,

This evening, as late as they possibly could, in a pathetic attempt to avoid the press, Deloitte & Touche have waved the white flag and surrendered to SHAC.

. . .

There has never been a response to a target like this one — we were swamped with phone calls and emails all day long as activists went to war against Deloitte & Touche. Offices were picketed, home demo’s were carried out on directors, locks were glued, offices and homes were spray painted. There was leafleting, there were mass phone calls, there were mass e-mails, there were actions taking place all over he world daily. Most of all there was relentless drive and determination of all of you to drive SHAC’s message home: sever your links with HLS or face the consequences.

The Financial Times quoted an unnamed Deloitte & Touche employee as saying, “There has been criminal damage, windows broken, doors glued shut, and intimidation of wives and young children of several staff.”

Unfortunately running away might not solve the problem. SHAC’s Greg Avery told AcountancyAge.Com that the animal rights group would likely continue to target Deloitte & Touche,

If the latest annual report comes out of HLS with Deloitte’s name on it [as auditor] then we will still consider them to be the company’s auditors.

HLS meanwhile appealed for the British government to follow through on promises of cracking down on such extremism. In a statement the company said,

This is yet another example of how the law and order systems of this country are unable to protect individuals and companies from the illegal acts that inevitably now accompany animal rights protests. How long can the British government allow this extortion to continue?

How long indeed.

Sources:

Amazing! Deloitte & Touche pull out after only 10 days. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, March 2003.

Form 8-K Current Report. Life Sciences Research, February 28, 2003.

Deloitte quits as auditor of drug-testing group. Patrick Jenkins, Financial Times, March 1, 2003.

Deloitte severs ties with HLS. Paul Grant, AccountancyAge.Com, February 2, 2003.

Arrest as protesters target HLS auditor. Cambridge News, February 27, 2003.

Supreme Court Rejects Anti-Abortion Racketeering Lawsuit

The Supreme Court overturned by a vote of 8-1 a successful lawsuit brought against anti-abortion protesters under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act.

The National Organization of Women successfully sued Joseph M. Scheidler using the civil lawsuit provisions of the RICO act. NOW argued in court that anti-abortion activists who protested at clinics were in essence not simply practicing civil disobedience, but in fact formed a criminal conspiracy aimed at extorting legitimate business enterprise.

Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing in the majority opinion, said of this novel legal theory,

There is no dispute in these cases that petitioners interfered with, disrupted, and in some instances completely deprived respondents of their ability to exercise their property rights. Likewise, petitioners’ counsel readily acknowledged at oral argument that aspects of his clients’ conduct were criminal. But even when their acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of “shutting down” a clinic that performed abortions, such acts did not constitute extortion because petitioners did not “obtain” respondents’ property. Petitioners may have deprived or sought to deprive respondents of their alleged property right of exclusive control of their business assets, but they did not acquire any such property. Petitioners neither pursued nor received “something of value from” respondents that they could exercise, transfer, or sell.

This ruling will likely mean an end to any remaining efforts to use RICO against animal rights activists. The court is pretty clear that whatever else the activities of a group like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty might be, it doesn’t make sense to describe them as extortion.

In a brief concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points to where opponents of animal rights extremism should look as a model — Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994. This act provides additional criminal and civil penalties for individuals and groups who block access to clinics. In effect, the law says that organized efforts to deny women access to abortion clinics constitutes a crime of serious enough nature that it needs to be prosecuted as more than a simple trespassing or disturbing the peace.

The Supreme Court has turned away all challenges to the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act that have reached it, and thus it would serve well as model legislation designed to more effectively deal with organized criminal acts against animal enterprises.

Sources:

Scheidler vs. National Organization for Women.

High court overturns ruling in abortion case. Elliott Blackburn, The Daily Texan, February 27, 2003.

Extortion law ruled invalid in protest case. Joan Biskupic, USA Today, February 27, 2003.

Protection for protesters. John Leon, U.S. News & World Report, March 10, 2003.

UNOS Again Shows Its Impotence

The United Network for Organ Sharing came out this week and stated the obvious — that Duke University violated numerous UNOS regulations when it gave not one, but two sets of organs to Jesica Santillan.

First, of course, Santillan was in the United States illegally and UNOS policie are quite clear — illegal immigrants are not eligible for organ transplants.

Second, patients must appear on a special eligibility list before they can receive organs. Santillan was not on that eligibility list. Organs are at times given to individuals not on the special eligibility list when there is a risk that the organs will not find a donor, but in the Santillan case it is clear that UNOS policies were not followed.

UNOS Vice President Russell Wiesner said of the Santillan debacle,

We have an obligation to maintain the trust of those who are considering making the decision to be organ donors, so that they and their loved ones feel confident about that important decision. The national transplant system relies on public trust.

But UNOS continues to betray that trust — Duke University Hospial will almost certainly face no official repercussions from UNOS despite the problems with Santillan’s transplants.

Which begs the question of how exactly Americans are served by UNOS’ continued monopoly on donated organs.

Half a Cheer for St. Bonaventure’s Basketball Team

After the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team decided not to play its final two games of the season it has been excoriated in the sport’s press and the Atlantic 10 is talking about whether or not to drop the team from its league. But in the face of the absurdity that is the NCAA, is what St. Bonaventure’s team decided to do all that bizarre?

The team’s problems started with when junior college transfer Jamil Terrell joined the St. Bonaventure team last April. Terrell was ineligible and St. Bonaventure’s compliance officer warned the basketball coach at the time, but the coach went to the university president who overruled the compliance officer and allowed Terrell to join the team.

He played in 25 games and when the Atlantic-10 athletic directors finally declared him ineligible a few weeks ago, they forced St. Bonaventure to not only forfeit 6 of their games, but banned the team from the Atlantic-10 postseason tournament. The team said thanks, but no thanks, and decided not to play its final two games.

This brought outrage from commentators whining about the team being quitters who disgraced their sport and league. Give me a break — NCAA men’s basketball has so disgraced itself at the coaching and administrative level, that it’s hard to believe St. Bonaventure’s basketball team created even a ripple.

This is an organization, after all, where Bobby Knight can be caught on tape choking a player during practice, and he is free to coach at any school that will have him. Terrell gets a welding certificate rather than an actual degree, however, and the Atlantic-10 issues it the basketball equivalent of the death penalty. Coaches like Jerry Tarkanian can violation hop from one university to another leaving ineligible players in their wake while raking in the financial rewards for themselves.

This is an industry in which the median salary for men’s NCAA basketball coaches is $290,000 but everyone freaks out when some kid wants a booster to cover his $300 phone bill.

The only academic mission the NCAA has left is serving up a hefty portion of Hypocrisy 101.

No Sex for Oil?

One of the nuttier ideas for opposing war in Iraq comes from a feminist-inspired group called The Lysistrata Project, inspired by the famous play by Aristophanes. The Danish-based group is planning a reading of Lysistrata in 56 countries, and also is seriously urging women not to have sex with men who favor war in Iraq.

Danish actress Anne-Marie Helger told the BBC News Online that, “Mrs. Blair, Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Rasmusen should stay out of their husbands’ beds until they call their dogs off.”

The BBC quotes Rhea Leman, an American theater director working in Copenhagen, as saying, “Basically we are saying No Peace, No Sex.”

Blogger Asparagirl has the perfect response to such nonsense,

The project of course assumes that all women are anti-war and all men are pro-war, and that furthermore the only way for women to make their political opinions known is to withhold sex, and further still that any woman would actually want to do that. It also implies that the best way that today’s women have of influencing their worlds is not through their writings, speeches, jobs, money or votes, but through their ability to have or not have sex, and that the sex will be solely with men, who are of course the real powerhouses in our society when it comes to shaping world events.

Sources:

Real women don’t wage war? Asparagirl.Com, March 2, 2003.

Sex boycott urged over war. The BBC, March 3, 2003.

Killing Women: Two for the Price of One in Iran

New Zealand News recently ran a chilling story about how the Iranian legal system devalues the lives of women. The story centered around Tehran-based human rights lawyer Hadjimashhady whose daughter was killed in a car accident in 2002 after a 70-year-old opium addicted truck driver fell asleep and ran a stop sign.

Under Iranian law, Hadjimashhady was entitled to blood money from the family of the driver, but because the victim was a woman, he was only entitled to half the blood money that would have been required had the victim been a man.

Hadjimashhady told The New Zealand Times that he wasn’t interested in the blood money, and that the differing rates for men and women make the whole affair even more bizarre,

I don’t want the dieh [blood money]. Janooreh [the truck driver] doesn’t have any money, he wasn’t insured, and he doesn’t have any family. But this law, this is a reactionary law. It is something that belongs in medieval times, I think.

A group of female Members of Parliament in Iran are campaigning to equalize the monetary amounts. They note that while the system may have made sense in a traditional, nonindustrial society — where the death of a man could mean the death of the primary income provider in the family — that it is insulting to women in contemporary Iran.

Fatemeh Rakei of the Iranian Parliament’s Committee for Women’s Issues also cites a similar religious tradition called quessas, in which if a woman murders a man the mans’ family can demand vengeance (i.e., the death of the woman), but if a man kills a woman, the woman’s family must first pay the man’s family half of the man’s blood money before demanding vengeance.

Rakei told The New Zealand News that she believes this has led to an increase in wife killing since many families simply can’t afford to pay the blood money.

Source:

The price of women. Tim Elliott, The New Zealand News, February 15, 2003.