According to the Morning Call, “Almost Heaven Kennel workers who claimed they were held illegally in a 2008 raid by Pennsylvania SPCA officers have settled their federal lawsuit against the humane society for $75,000, according to court documents.”
The suit, filed in September, claimed officers of the state Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals swarmed the kennel on Chestnut Street in Upper Milford Township and detained the plaintiffs, including four children, for up to nine hours.
The plaintiffs, claiming violations of the Fourth Amendment, false imprisonment and inadequate training and supervision of PSPCA officers, sought unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.
The fourth amendment states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
“According to the settlement agreement approved last Thursday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry S. Perkin, the four minors, who are children of kennel employees and volunteers, will each receive $3,423. The other plaintiffs, who include kennel owner Bryan Smith; the children’s mothers, Donna Dotterer, April Welter and Sondra Finley; and five other kennel workers will equally divide $30,807.”
So I guess it is safe to safe that crime does pay. Bryan and his partner, Derbe Eckhart, owned the former puppy mill, Almost Heaven Kennel. A raid in 2008 resulted in Eckhart serving 9 1/2 months in jail. Eckhart was released this past March with five years of probation. Almost Heaven Kennel was a hell-hole of a place. It was a commercial breeding facility in which Eckhart repeatedly was in trouble with the law for decades in which he provided a lack of care and caused abuse and neglect against the poor dogs. I saw the pictures and video when dispayed during Eckhart’s hearings and trial.
Eckhart claims ” he now knows first-hand ” what it’s like to be caged up” like the hundreds of animals he once kept at his Almost Heaven Kennel, and he promises he’s “learned a lot of things”. I sure hope so but for someone whose life revolved around the puppy mill industry, it would be difficult to imagine that he could unlearn his way of thinking in a short amount of time.
Eckhart is a free man and his partner, Smith gets rewarded by the courts. I am no lawyer but the fourth amendment clearly states “unreasonable searches and seizures”. What was unreasonable about the Almost Heaven Kennel’s search and seizure? Eckhart and Smith knew that their “business” had been in trouble prior to the raid in 2008. Eckhart had been charged with animal cruelty in the past.
What is even more troubling is the fact that animals were abused which ultimately led to the demise of the former Almost Heaven Kennel. How can this raid be considered unreasonable? And for one of the partners who allowed these animals to live under these unbearable conditions to be rewarded monetarily.
Isn’t it ironic that they are still making money off of these dogs?
Does the justice system work?