PETA Lawsuit Compels Utah County to Hand Over Pound-Seizure Records

December 2010

After PETA filed a lawsuit alleging that Davis County, Utah, had violated state open records laws by withholding documents related to more than 100 homeless dogs and cats whom its public shelter had sold to the University of Utah for painful and deadly experiments in 2009, the county agreed to hand over the records and reimburse PETA more than $17,000 for legal expenses. The shelter stopped selling animals to laboratories in March 2010 after a PETA exposé at the University of Utah prompted an amendment to Utah’s pound-seizure law that allows shelters to opt out of the shameful practice.