New York Daily News
Pet-shelter critic wins 251G suit
Feb 16, 2007

BY ERNIE NASPRETTO
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU

A JOURNALIST has won $251,000 from the Town of Southampton in a lawsuit over her constitutional right to bad-mouth its animal shelter, her attorney said.

Pat Lynch, a former writer and producer for "NBC Nightly News," was awarded the money by a jury in West Islip Federal Court on Wednesday after a nine-day civil trial.

Her suit alleged that she was dismissed as a volunteer from the Southampton Animal Shelter after a series of her letters to the editor was published in The Southampton Press criticizing the shelter's euthanasia policy.

"This is the first time in this part of the country where constitutional rights have been extended to volunteers in an employment setting," said her lawyer Steve Morelli.

Lynch had worked at the shelter as a volunteer for three years, but was banished in February 2004 after she wrote a series of blistering attacks in letters to the editor on the shelter's loose euthanasia policies - and three days after filing a suit in state court against the shelter, Morelli said.

The state lawsuit resulted in an injunction halting the shelter from euthanizing animals. That injunction was lifted after a state judge dismissed the suit in July 2004, resulting in 11 dogs being immediately euthanized, Morelli said.

A year later, Lynch filed suit in federal court, saying her First Amendment rights were violated.

"They said the timing [of being fired] right after I filed the first lawsuit was a coincidence, but the jury didn't buy it. I lifted the rock and showed what was underneath it," said Lynch, who won two Emmy awards at NBC News and is now a freelance writer.

But conditions at the shelter actually improved before the jury's verdict, Lynch said.

"A board certified behaviorist, paid for by a private donation, trained attendants to make proper determinations relating to euthanasia," she said.

"I understand fully that some animals must be euthanized, but unqualified people were making these decisions and destroying some dogs that were definitely adoptable," Lynch said.

A spokesman for the Southampton Animal Shelter declined to comment.

enaspretto@nydailynews.com