Donors & taxpayers could save multi-millions if agencies just obeyed laws
LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK CITY, SAN DIEGO––The New York City-based American SPCA, with scant actual presence either in New York City or anywhere else, is catching a lot of online flak lately for paying ASPCA president Matt Bershadker upward of $1.2 million a year, which is about a million bucks a year over the norm for big city humane society executive director.
But when it comes to throwing money down the drain for not honoring either donor or taxpayer expectations, the ASPCA lately seems to be running behind Los Angeles Animal Services, the San Diego Humane Society, and even the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.
San Diego Humane Society lost “cat control trial of the century,” but that was just the beginning
The most recent drain rinse with donor greenbacks, by the San Diego Humane Society, came as a coda to the long-running “cat control trial of the century,” brought in May 2021 by the Southern California animal rescue charities Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal in December 2024 issued a preliminary ruling against how the San Diego Humane Society practiced “return to field” cat population management.
When the San Diego Humane Society continued to practice “return-to-field” without procedural amendment, Judge Bacal in February 2025 reinforced her previous ruling with a preliminary injunction.
Bacal then ended the case with a June 9, 2025 final ruling that the San Diego Humane Society had sufficiently amended how it handles cats found at large to comply with California state law.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Lawyers get paid by the defendants
But San Diego lawyers Bryan Pease and Parisa Ijadi-Maghsoodi, who had represented the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors pro bono, were aware that as the plaintiffs explained in a media release, “California’s private attorney general statute requires defendants to pay market-rate attorneys’ fees when litigation confers a significant public benefit.
“The Court found that standard met here.”
Bacal on January 5, 2026 awarded fees of $361,530 to Pease, $143,075 to Ijadi, $10,412.50 to David Tennenbaum, who was a third attorney for the plaintiffs, and $8,490 to paralegal Laura Beth Henson, a total of $523,507.50 paid out in a case which could have been completely avoided if the San Diego Humane Society had complied with California state law in the first place.
(HSSD photo)
San Diego Humane Society ran bill up against themselves
Much of the payout could also have been avoided if the San Diego Humane Society had complied with the December 2024 court order.
And very likely the San Diego Humane Society spent much more in unsuccessfully defending the case.
(See Injunction vs. San Diego HS “return-to-field” cat practices made permanent.)
“Over the past year,” commented Animal Politics blogger Ed Boks, “Animal Politics has followed the landmark case involving the San Diego Humane Society.
“A California judge found that the San Diego Humane Society violated state animal protection laws by refusing intake of friendly, adoptable cats, labeling them ‘community cats,’ and releasing them outdoors instead of providing care and the legally required holding period.
“A rare & meaningful validation”
“The court permanently enjoined these practices,” Boks reminded. “Then it went further, ordering the San Diego Humane Society to pay more than $500,000 in attorneys’ fees.
“That second step matters. It signals that courts may treat these cases as enforcement of public law, not just internal policy disagreements, and that systemic abandonment can carry serious financial consequences.
“Taken together,” Boks assessed, “the ruling represents a rare and meaningful moment of judicial validation for advocates who have long argued that these policies cause predictable harm and violate the law.”
Boks from 2006 to 2013 headed Los Angeles Animal Services.
Los Angeles Animal Services during Boks’ tenure was not implicated in any fatal or disfiguring dog attacks. Neither did Los Angeles Animal Services do anything then that resulted in seven-figure payouts later to victims of any other culpable miscreance.
Third L.A. Animal Services six-figure payout in three years
On January 30, 2026, however, Los Angeles Times staff writer Sandra McDonald disclosed the third seven-figure payout from the City of Los Angeles for a disfiguring pit bull attack in only three years, each case involving significant errors of judgment––and priorities––by Los Angeles Animal Services’ senior personnel.
Unless there have been undisclosed settlements, another six similar cases may be pending.
Explained McDonald, “After Kristin Wright adopted a gray pit bull named Valerio from an L.A. city animal shelter, he attacked her, breaking her right arm and peeling the skin off her left arm.”
Bit previous owner’s mother’s face
The August 2022 attack came just two days after Wright took Valerio home, after monitoring social media postings promoting Valerio since February 2022.
“Only later,” McDonald wrote, “did Wright discover that Valerio was surrendered to the shelter after biting his previous owner’s elderly mother in the face.
“Wright and her husband sued the city, reaching a $3.25-million settlement” in November 2025.
“Wright, 75, said she never would have adopted Valerio had she known of his violent history,” McDonald wrote, “After multiple surgeries, she still has nerve damage and pain in her fingers and hands, making it difficult for her to do her work as an accountant.”
Moved to obey state law six years later
Los Angeles Animal Services communications director Agnes Sibal-von Debschitz told McDonald, McDonald paraphrased, “that in response to Wright’s case, the agency formalized a disclosure policy in November 2025 that requires shelter employees to check a dog’s bite history before finalizing an adoption.”
But California AB 588, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 2, 2019, had already required such a policy to be in effect for almost six years.
AB 588 responded to at least 17 known disfiguring maulings and two deaths since 2014 inflicted by dogs rehomed or offered for rehoming by California animal shelters, all but one of those incidents allegedly involving a pit bull with undisclosed bite history.
What the law says
AB 588 applies to any “public animal control agency or shelter, society for the prevention of cruelty to animals shelter, humane society shelter, or rescue group,” defined as “a for-profit or not-for-profit entity or a collaboration of individuals that removes dogs from a public animal control agency or shelter, society for the prevention of cruelty to animals shelter, or humane shelter, or rehomes a dog that has been previously owned by any person other than the original breeder of that dog.”
Stipulates AB 588, “If an animal shelter or rescue group knows, to the best of the knowledge of the shelter or rescue group, that a dog, at the age of four months or older, bit a person and broke that person’s skin, thus requiring a state-mandated bite quarantine, the animal shelter or rescue group shall, before selling, giving away, or otherwise releasing the dog, do both of the following:
“(1) Disclose in writing to the person to whom the dog is sold, given away, or transferred, the dog’s known bite history and the circumstances related to the bite.
“(2) Obtain a signed acknowledgment from the person to whom the dog is sold, given away, or transferred that the person has been provided information about the dog as required by this section.”
Violations of AB 588 “shall be punished by a civil fine not to exceed five hundred dollars ($500), imposed by the city or county in which the animal shelter or rescue group is located.”
(Kenneth Phillips photo.)
What’s $500 compared to the cost of keeping a pit bull?
$500 is scarcely a deterrent compared to the cost of sheltering a pit bull indefinitely who cannot be safely rehomed, while trying to maintain a 90% “no kill” live release rate, but $3.25 million may not be, either, in view that at least two previous payouts resulting from Los Angeles Animal Services policies were more than twice that high.
The Los Angeles City Council on June 14, 2024 approved a record $7.5 million settlement of claims resulting from a September 26, 2020 attack by a rehomed pit bull named O’Gee on Argelia Alvarado, 74, of Van Nuys.
(See $7.5 million award for mauling by pit bull rehomed from L.A. Animal Services.)
“Valerio’s case raises questions” already raised for years
The Argelia Alvarado award surpassed the $6.8 million jury award issued on May 31, 2023 to former Los Angeles Animal Services shelter volunteer Kelly Kaneko, 36, who was mauled inside a city shelter by a German shepherd.
(See Jury orders L.A. Animal Services to pay $6.8 million to mauled volunteer.)
“Valerio’s case,” wrote McDonald, “raises questions about how shelter officials transmit information about bite histories to potential adopters and the network of volunteers who help find homes for the dogs, as well as what outside parties do with that information.
“Often,” McDonald observed, “volunteers and animal rescuers post social media pleas like the ones Wright responded to, in a race against time to save dogs from potentially being euthanized to make space in the overcrowded shelters.
“Wright said that shelter volunteers told her Valerio was ‘sweet’ and just needed lots of love after being there more than a year.
“Much worse than that”
“Shelter workers mentioned a previous bite but characterized it as a nip at the heels and ‘not a big deal,’ she said.
“Valerio’s past was much worse than that,” recounted McDonald.
“He was surrendered to the shelter by his owner” on April 27, 2021. The owner, after Valerio attacked her mother, inflicting facial injuries, “feared for her 8-year-old child.”
An investigator “took Valerio, waiving impound fees for public safety reasons,” McDonald summarized.
“According to city records uncovered in Wright’s lawsuit and reviewed by The Times,” McDonald said, “Valerio had been marked for euthanasia for dangerous behavior in April 2022, four months before Wright adopted him.
“But an error on the euthanasia form, marking the reason as overpopulation in the shelter rather than a risk to public safety, meant he was still available to ordinary adopters such as Wright.”
Level 4 injuries “didn’t sound serious”
That same form noted that Valerio’s bite to the victim’s face was classified as “level 4,” meaning his teeth sunk in deeply, according to a severity scale from the Assn. of Professional Dog Trainers. Such a dog is “very dangerous” and has a poor prognosis, the association said.
Longtime Los Angeles dog rescue activist Kiana Kang acknowledged to McDonald that “she wrote the February 2022 warmheartsproject Instagram post” that first drew Wright’s notice.
That posting mentioned that Valerio had bite history, but Kang told McDonald that she learned about it from shelter volunteers, ” and to Kang it “didn’t sound serious,” Kang said.
“Kang said that at the time, she relied on shelter volunteers for information about dogs, and they didn’t remind her about the bite before she wrote” a second posting promoting Valerio in June 2022.
Candy stripers
“In Valerio’s case,” wrote Ed Boks in Animal Politics, “the city didn’t just hide a level-4 facial bite behind a cheery kennel card.
“It effectively outsourced risk management to an informal network of volunteers and social-media advocates.
“Imagine a hospital relying on candy stripers to convey a patient’s cancer diagnosis, or a newspaper letting unpaid freelancers publish directly to the front page.
“That is the level of institutional un-seriousness with which Los Angeles is treating public safety.”
L.A. County has avoided seven-figure payouts since 2019
By contrast with Los Angeles City, Los Angeles County Animal Care & Control has not been assessed a seven-figure payout for a dog attack since agreeing in 2019 to pay $1.1 million to survivors of Pamela Devitt.
Walking for exercise, Devitt, 63, was on May 9, 2013 fatally mauled by four pit bulls who had often run at large for as long as eight years, despite repeated complaints from neighbors about dangerous behavior.
Los Angeles County was successfully sued by Devitt’s husband and two adult children for failing to impound the pit bulls.
Alex Donald Jackson, owner of the pit bulls who killed Devitt, , was in 2014 convicted of second degree murder for allowing them to run at large. He was sentenced to serve 15 years to life in state prison.
K-9 handler case
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office tossed $6.5 million down the drain by continuing to employ former sheriff’s deputy and K9 dog handler Jeremy Banks for at least 14 years, 2007-2021, despite at least 17 separate allegations of use of excessive force filed against him.
Among the most serious cases originated in 2014, Jeff McDonald of the San Diego Union-Tribune narrated, when Mickail Miles, then age 26, and a Camp Pendleton preschool teacher, “was pulled over at a Fallbrook-area gas station by sheriff’s deputies investigating a nearby burglary.”
The suspect was reportedly Hispanic; Miles is African-American.
“Within minutes of the encounter,” Jeff McDonald wrote, “Myles was handcuffed and beaten about the head, even though other deputies later testified he was being cooperative. Then-deputy Jeremy Banks,” a white man, “sicced his dog on Myles, who was bitten several times and suffered significant injuries.
County did not want to pay $5 million, so now pays $6.5 million
“That ignited a more than decade-long legal saga that ran well past $10 million in damages and attorney fees, before a federal appellate court sharply curtailed those costs” in 2025.
“Mickail Myles won a jury verdict, but a federal appeals court reversed its $5 million damages award. Now the county has settled with the former Camp Pendleton preschool teacher.”
On February 2, 2026, Jeff McDonald continued, “lawyers for the county and Myles notified the San Diego federal court that they had reached a deal to pay him and his attorneys a total of $6.5 million, finally ending the fight.
“The settlement is the latest in a string of high-profile, multimillion-dollar payouts by San Diego County to people who accused the Sheriff’s Office of negligence, excessive force and other misconduct,” Jeff McDonald noted.
“In the past 10 years, that office alone has paid more than a quarter billion dollars to families of people who died or suffered other damage at the hands of sheriff’s deputies and other staff.”
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
The use of lawyers and courts should not be necessary to ensure that those entrusted with upholding the law, whether dog law or people law, obey the law themselves.
Ignoring that premise, meanwhile, is costing San Diego and Los Angeles donors and taxpayers multi-millions of dollars, with small consequence to the individuals responsible, none of whom are in jail or even facing charges.
Please donate to support our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate/
Discover more from Animals 24-7
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The action of releasing adoptable cats into the streets without regard to what these animals will experience and feel, mislabeling this cruel behavior as part of a “community cat” program, lying about the motivation for this behavior, and failing to inform adopters about an animal’s bite history reveal a shelter director’s stunning lack of empathy for animals and people.
It also reveals an individual who is comfortable with lying.
This points to the importance of an in-depth interview that includes a psychological/psychiatric assessment of any person who applies for the position of director of an animal shelter.
Any dog that bites needs to be destroyed, period.
As for the misguided behavior of those failing to care for adoptable cats, of course this should be dealt with accordingly. *”Adoptable,” though, is moot. Many, if not most, cats are, in fact, adoptable, either as “working cats,” or with time, love, and patience invested in them, as loving, loyal companions.*
Sharing with gratitude, and a lot more.