Judge orders state department to reveal findings in horse deaths
By the Associated Press

GREAT FALLS - The state Department of Livestock must let the public know what it found in its investigation into the deaths of horses at a feedlot in Shelby, a judge has ruled.

Livestock officials had no reason to withhold their findings about the Bar S feedlot, District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena ruled.

In fact, he said, the report is "exactly the type of information obtained by state agencies that should be subject to public disclosure."

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The Great Falls Tribune filed suit after the department refused to open its file on the case.

"This is a case where a government agency is doing investigations to ensure that laws are being upheld and that the interests of the public are being served, and in this case the concern was the safety of animals," said Tribune Executive Editor Jim Strauss.

"It seems when government employees who are paid with taxpayer dollars are doing an investigation, really, on behalf of the public, the public has a right to know the results of those investigations," he added.

The Department of Livestock was represented by the attorney general's office and will need to confer with that attorney to decide what to do, department spokeswoman Karen Cooper said Friday. She said the department learned of Sherlock's ruling only Friday morning.

Toole County officials charged the Bar S with cruelty to animals after reports that as many as 10 horses died of exhaustion last June after getting mired in thick manure at the feedlot following a torrential rain.

The Bar S, owned by the Bouvry family, is a way station for thousands of horses en route to a Canadian slaughterhouse owned by the same family.

The animals sometimes spend months in outdoor pens before being shipped across the border, where they are turned into steaks for European butcher shops and restaurants.

The cruelty charge was filed several months after the deaths occurred.

But neither the Department of Livestock nor the Toole County sheriff's office would provide details on grounds that they were part of a criminal investigation.

In court, the department argued that it is a criminal justice agency and that information gathered in the investigation involves the rights of privacy of the defendants and witnesses.

Attorneys for the Tribune maintained that the Department of Livestock is not a criminal agency, and Sherlock agreed. Even if that were the case, he said, the department was not acting in that capacity when it filed a report on the Bar S.

Cooper reiterated the department's position Friday that it is a law enforcement agency.

"We have 26 officers, Montana peace officers," she said. "We are a law enforcement agency and have been since 1885."

The department visited the feedlot initially to determine whether it was complying with a requirement to brand horses within 24 hours of their arrival at the feedlot.

In the department's report, "there are a number of references to Bar S/Bouvry's failure to comply with a contract made with the state of Montana as well as the inappropriateness of the state's involvement with a feedlot that maintained such deplorable conditions," Sherlock wrote.

That's the type of information that should be disclosed to the public, the judge said.

State law says the public and media can be excluded from such information only when its dissemination would create "a clear and present danger" to the fairness of a defendant's trial, Sherlock wrote.

Suppressing such information is a rare occurrence, he said, and "the state by no means has met this standard."

Jennifer Hendricks, an attorney with the Meloy Law Firm, which represented the Tribune, said the ruling makes clear "that the state didn't have a basis for withholding the vast majority" of the livestock department's report.