MOSCOW, April 11 (RAPSI, Ingrid Burke) – A group of animal welfare organizations have challenged a circus production company’s request for $25.5 million in legal fees following a failed elephants’ rights suit.

Advocacy groups Animal Welfare Institute, The Fund for Animals, Inc., and Born Free USA refer to “the largest lodestar request ever made in this district” as titanic, tone-deaf, ridiculous, and unconscionable in documents filed with the court Wednesday. They added that the defendant production company is “no shrinking violet that has been reluctantly dragged into the courtroom.”

The dispute dates back to July 2000, when several animal welfare groups and a former circus employee filed a complaint against Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus (Ringling Bros.). The complaint was dismissed for lack of standing in June 2001, but that decision was reversed in February 2003.

Several months later, in September 2003, the plaintiffs filed a new complaint against Ringling Bros. as well as production company Feld Entertainment, Inc.

The complaint alleged that Ringling Bros. had harmed, harassed, and wounded endangered animals in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

“Ringling Bros. engages in these unlawful activities by routinely beating elephants to ‘train’ them, ‘discipline’ them, and keep them under control; chaining them for long periods of time; hitting them with sharp bull hooks; ‘breaking’ baby elephants with force to make them submissive; and forcibly removing nursing baby elephants from their mothers before they are weaned, with the use of ropes and chains,” the complaint asserted.

The complaint alleged that circus elephants across the US were routinely beaten by their Ringling Bros. trainers. The plaintiff circus performer “saw and heard baby elephants cry in pain from their beatings,” the complaint said.

The plaintiffs sought from the court an order declaring that Feld’s treatment of its elephants was in violation of the ESA, enjoining Feld from continuing its alleged violations, and seeking attorney’s fees, among other things.

The litigation endured until December 2009 when a Washington DC federal district court held in favor of the defendants, finding that the plaintiffs had failed to establish standing.

Specifically the court found that the animal welfare organizations had failed to establish an injury traceable to Feld’s actions that the court would be able to redress. The former employee likewise failed to establish an injury, and was written off by the court as a witness who “often gave conflicting answers and was repeatedly impeached on the witness stand.”

The court then ordered that the plaintiffs should pay the defendants’ legal fees.

The defendants proposed $25.5 million in fees, to which the plaintiff organizations responded in Wednesday’s filing, “as small, nonprofit, public interest organizations, Plaintiffs lack the ability to pay even a fraction of the ridiculous sum sought by (Feld), a two-billion-dollar privately held juggernaut.”

The organizations further added that there is little need for deterrence. “Plaintiffs have already been soundly deterred from engaging in similar litigation in the future by the time, cost, and disastrous result of this case,” the filing said.

The plaintiffs noted that they filed the lawsuit in good faith, to advance animal welfare, rather than to turn a profit.

They added that the circus performer – who bore the brunt of the court’s criticism – is now dead, and will not be contributing to the fee payout. According to the filing he is judgment proof, having left no estate that could satisfy any portion of the payout.

The organizations further argued that both their absolute and relative financial conditions should weigh in favor of substantially smaller fees, suggesting that an award of $2 million or less should suffice.