Legal Impact for Chickens v. Case Farms
Legal Impact for Chickens is suing KFC-supplier Case Farms for its pattern of gross mismanagement and cruelty toward newborn chicks. Case Farms is a major U.S. poultry producer.
The complaint comes on the heels of a 2021 undercover investigation by animal advocacy group Animal Outlook.
The 2021 undercover investigation revealed a trend of cruel and deadly abuse at a Morganton, NC Case Farms hatchery that processes more than 200,000 chicks daily. Legal Impact for Chickens is accusing Case Farms of violating both industry standards and North Carolina law.
Case Farms has been documented knowingly operating faulty equipment, including a machine piston which repeatedly smashes chicks to death and a dangerous metal conveyor belt which traps and kills young birds. Case Farms was also documented crushing chicks’ necks between heavy plastic trays.
Case Farms supplies its chicken meat to KFC, Taco Bell, and Boar’s Head, among other customers. The poultry company breeds and kills almost 200 million birds each year.
Legal Impact for Chickens filed our Case Farms lawsuit on May 24, 2023 in North Carolina’s Burke County District Court. We’re grateful that Animal Outlook later agreed to join Legal Impact for Chickens as our co-counsel in the suit!
On August 4, 2023, Legal Impact for Chickens propounded our first set of discovery in the Case Farms lawsuit. Discovery is a process by which a party to a civil case can demand information from another party. Among other things, we are demanding permission to inspect a Case Farms hatchery.
On August 16, 2023, Case Farms filed an answer and motion to dismiss.
As of October 2023, Case Farms has begun responding to our discovery requests. In doing so, Case Farms admitted “that it does not maintain any records of” occurrences where a chick was injured, harmed, maimed or died.
On October 20, 2023, LIC filed a second amended complaint, detailing ongoing cruelty at Case Farms’s Morganton slaughterhouse. Among other things, the amended complaint adds allegations of chickens boiled alive.
On December 1, 2023, LIC responded in opposition to Case Farms’s motion to dismiss. LIC explained that the complaint, “sufficiently alleges that the Case Entities have and continue to violate North Carolina’s prohibition against animal cruelty by, among other things, trapping, crushing, and running over newly hatched chicks.”
The Burke County District Court held a hearing on Case Farms’s motion to dismiss on December 5, 2023. LIC presented oral argument. Unfortunately, the judge ruled from the bench that he would grant Case Farms’s motion to dismiss.
On January 30, 2024, Legal Impact for Chickens filed a notice of appeal to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. LIC believes that the North Carolina Court of Appeals will agree that KFC-supplier Case Farms is not immune from the cruelty law and cannot escape liability for its behavior. LIC is honored to be represented by Dan Gibson, a North Carolina lawyer with an extensive track record of arguing—and winning—before the Court of Appeals.
On August 1, 2024, LIC filed the record on appeal with the North Carolina Court of Appeals. And on September 3, 2024, LIC filed its opening appellate brief. LIC’s brief explains: “[O]ur law declares Defendants’ animal cruelty unlawful. Our law . . . says how animals must be slaughtered—and boiling them alive is not a legal way to slaughter animals. 9 C.F.R. § 381.65; Treatment of Live Poultry Before Slaughter, 70 Fed. Reg. 56624-01, 56625 (Sept. 28, 2005). The law also prohibits abusing animals. Negligently killing or abusing an animal is criminal.”
Since then, farming groups, veterinarians, and a North Carolina animal rescue have all weighed in to stand up for birds.
The Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, The Cornucopia Institute, and Food Animal Concerns Trust moved together to submit an amicus brief. The farming groups’ brief states: “Defendants’ alleged conduct is not only unethical, but completely contrary to the professional standards of modern poultry farming.” Former North Carolina appellate judge Hon. Lucy Inman represents these three amici.
North Carolina veterinarian Dr. Laura Cochrane, DVM, forensic veterinarian Dr. Martha Smith-Blackmore, DVM, and North Carolina nonprofit DEGA Mobile Veterinary Care moved together to submit a second amicus brief. The veterinarians’ brief states: “North Carolina takes animal cruelty seriously.” North Carolina appellate attorney Michael G. Schietzelt and colleague Luke Taylor represent the three veterinary amici.
North Carolina animal rescue Beautiful Together also moved to submit an amicus brief. Beautiful Together’s brief states: “Legal Impact for Chicken’s complaint alleges shocking atrocities that, if committed against a dog or cat, would merit universal condemnation.” North Carolina appellate specialist Christopher S. Edwards represents Beautiful Together.
On November 4, 2024, Case Farms filed its own appellate brief. Case Farms’s brief openly advocates for a reading of the law where, “‘[a] veterinarian can regularly perform major surgery on animals without anesthesia, and a hog farmer can routinely kill diseased hogs by torturing them to death.’”
LIC filed our appellate reply brief on November 21, 2024. Stay tuned.