Opinion ID: 616285
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Tom Rider

Text: In our prior decision, we held that the allegations in Rider's complaint, if proven, were sufficient to establish standing. Then, following a six-week bench trial, the district court found that Rider failed to credibly prove the allegations the Court of Appeals had to accept as true at the pleading stage to support Rider's Article III standing to sue. ASPCA, 677 F.Supp.2d at 67. The district court based its conclusion on extensive findings of fact, as well as its observations of Mr. Rider on the witness stand over the course of two days. Id. at 94. In particular, the district court determined that Rider was essentially a paid plaintiff and fact witness who is not credible. Id. at 67. In support of this finding, the district court observed that Rider complained publicly about the elephants' mistreatment only after he was paid by activists to do so. It is undisputed that between March 2000 and December 2008, Rider received at least $190,000 from the organizational plaintiffs in this lawsuit, as well as from an organization run by plaintiffs' attorneys. Although acknowledging that Rider performed some media and educational outreach work for the organizations during this time, the district court found that the primary purpose for the payments was to keep Rider involved with the litigation. The district court also noted that although these payments constituted Rider's sole income since March 2000, Rider had, in his answers to interrogatories, falsely denied receiving any compensation from the organizational plaintiffs and their counsel. In its detailed memorandum opinion, the district court also found that Rider had referred to one of the elephants as a bitch and killer elephant who hated him; that he struggled to recall the names of the elephants in two separate depositions; that he had failed to take advantage of multiple opportunities to visit the elephants outside of the circus; and that he was unable to identify the individual elephants on videotape, including one who had the distinctive and unusual (for an Asian elephant) characteristic of a swayed back. Id. at 83-87 (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court observed further that after leaving his employment with Feld, Rider had used a bullhook on elephants at a circus in Europe, casting doubt on his claim that he left the Ringling Brothers circus because he was unable to witness further mistreatment of Asian elephants. Finding that these facts, along with other inconsistencies in Rider's testimony, undermined his credibility, the district court concluded that Rider failed to prove that he had a personal and emotional attachment to the seven elephants with whom he worked sufficient to establish injury in fact. Id. at 89. On appeal, Rider seeks to overcome the district court's detailed factual findings and credibility determination by arguing that the district court applied a more stringent legal standard than required by our decisions. Specifically, he argues that the district court required him to prove a single-minded, all-consuming obsession with the elephants, Appellants' Br. 46, whereas our case law calls on him to show only that he developed a personal attachment to the elephants, ASPCA, 317 F.3d at 337, and that he suffered an injury in a personal and individual way, Glickman, 154 F.3d at 433. According to Rider, he satisfied this burden by convincing the district court that he worked closely with Feld's elephants for two-and-a-half years, that he complained to his direct supervisor and elephant handlers about the mistreatment, and that he saw some of the elephants ten to fifteen times per year when he visited the circus as part of his media work. The district court erred, he argues, by going on to find that if, as Rider testified, he quit his prior circus employment due to elephant abuse, he likely would not have remained in his subsequent employment with Feld for two-and-a-half years; that he failed to complain about the mistreatment to anyone in Feld's management; that he forewent opportunities to visit the elephants outside of the circus; and that it was unlikely that he would have undertaken his media and advocacy efforts had he not been paid to do so by the organizational plaintiffs. As discussed above, however, the district court's conclusion that Rider failed to credibly prove an emotional attachment to any particular elephant rested on extensive factual findings, including Rider's difficulty recalling the elephants' names, his use of the bullhook in Europe, his lack of forthrightness about payments he received from the organizational plaintiffs, and various inconsistencies in his testimony. The district court prefaced its findings with an accurate discussion of our decision in ASPCA and clearly recognized that an emotional attachment to a particular animal can form the predicate for an aesthetic injury. ASPCA, 677 F.Supp.2d at 89. That the district court relied on facts such as Rider's failure to complain to management hardly suggests that the court believed proof of such facts was required to establish a cognizable injury. Rather, the district court simply found that those facts, taken in the context of the record as a whole, further undermined Rider's credibility and called into question his personal attachment to Feld's elephants. Moreover, no case supports Rider's claim that the district court's findings that he worked with Feld's elephants for twoand-a-half years, made occasional complaints during that time, and subsequently witnessed the elephants performing in the circus are, by themselves, sufficient to establish injury in fact. Rider cites our decision in Glickman, claiming that it holds that a plaintiff's repeated visits to view animals maintained under inhumane conditions, if true, established the personal injury necessary to support Article III standing. Appellants' Br. 44. But it was not the visits alone that established the injury in Glickman, but rather the visits together with the plaintiff's claim, accepted as true at that stage of the proceeding, that the inhumane conditions injured his aesthetic sense. 154 F.3d at 431-32. As to this element of standing, the district court disbelieved Rider and found, as a matter of fact, that Rider did not have the personal attachment he claimed and did not, as he claimed, suffer from the elephants' mistreatment. Nothing in these findings reflects an erroneous application of our case law. Because Rider has failed to show that the district court applied an erroneous legal standard, we are left to review the district court's fact-findings and credibility determination for clear error. See Armstrong, 608 F.3d at 857. Under this standard, we may not set aside findings of fact simply because [we are] convinced that [we] would have decided the case differently. Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). Instead, to find clear error, we must be left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. Id. (quoting United States v. U.S. Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948)). Rider points to only one purportedly clear error in the district court's injury analysisits statement that [a]fter Mr. Rider left his employment with [Feld] in November 1999, he did not complain to the USDA or to any other animal control authority about the treatment of [Feld's] elephants, ASPCA, 677 F.Supp.2d at 70. According to Rider, this statement constitutes clear error because the record shows that Rider complained to USDA in July 2000. Read in context, however, the district court's statement is far from clearly erroneous. The court made the challenged statement in the course of a chronological recitation of Rider's history in various circuses, and the statement describes Rider's actions immediately following his departure from Feld and preceding his employment in Europe in December 1999. Rider has never claimed that he contacted USDA during that period. Moreover, as Feld points out, the district court's finding tracks Rider's trial testimony exactly. See Trial Tr. at 46 (Feb. 12, 2009 PM) (Q: And after you left Ringling Brothers, you didn't take any of your concerns about elephant treatment to the USDA, did you? A: No sir.). Given this, we see no basis for finding clear error.