Settlement Eyed in Egg-Farm Case

By Susan E. Lindt

As printed in the Intelligencer Journal on August 8, 2006

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Neither side is saying why, but attorneys facing off in an animal-cruelty case against one of the state’s largest egg farms pulled the battle behind closed doors in hopes of negotiating a settlement.

That was Monday, after five hours of testimony from witnesses for the prosecution in Jayne F. Duncan’s district court in Elizabethtown.

Attorneys for Esbenshade Farms chief executive H. Glenn Esbenshade and farm manager Jay Musser did manage to get one of the 35 animal-cruelty counts against each of them thrown out on a detail early Monday.

Each violation carries a potential fine of $50 to $750 and up to 90 days in prison.

Later, Duncan watched more than 20 minutes of videotaped footage of alleged animal-cruelty offenses at the farm, including birds impaled on cage wires and left to starve or bleed to death, hens with their beaks, wings and legs caught on hooks and birds in various stages of decomposition housed in the same cages as live chickens.

Animal welfare expert and professor Ian Duncan, who is not related to the district justice, testified for the prosecution that he had never seen worse conditions than what the videotape showed. He denied defense attorneys’ suggestions that the abuse was staged for the video.

“I’ve never seen conditions like that before,” Ian Duncan testified. “The whole scale of it—it just wouldn’t be feasible to stage it.”

Also testifying was John Brothers, who admitted he duped Esbenshade Farms into hiring him as a poultry worker so he could investigate the farm conditions for Compassion Over Killing, a Washington, D.C.-based animal rights advocacy group.

Brothers secretly shot the footage last year with a camera telephone and eyeglasses that contained a camera during his brief employment at the Mount Joy farm from Nov. 30 to Dec. 9.

Brothers narrated alleged violations Monday as his videotape was aired for District Justice Duncan. He said some hens snagged their wings and beaks in machinery and cages and could not access water and food. Some were so decomposed, he said, their bodies had rotted over the wire mesh of the cages.

“This went on throughout the (chicken) house,” Brothers testified. “Every step or two, I pulled out decomposed birds. ... It was the worst I had ever seen. I didn’t expect to see what I saw in there.”

In his cross-examination, defense attorney Chris Patterson tried to shift blame for the birds’ conditions to Brothers, insinuating it was his job to remove dead birds from cages, and he should have reported to Musser if he couldn’t keep up with the care of 170,000 birds in his charge or if unsafe conditions existed for birds at the farm.

Shortly after the videotape of alleged violations was shown, Duncan called a 15-minute break from the stifling heat of the crowded courtroom. Scores of spectators returned from the break to lawn chairs they set up in the back of the courtroom, leaving only standing room for many.

But attorneys for both sides remained behind closed doors trying to hammer out a settlement—which Duncan had encouraged since April’s preliminary hearing, when attorneys also spent hours in private trying to reach a settlement.

“Both sides agreed to try to work it out,” defense attorney Michael T. Winters said Monday.

“All attorneys are always willing to try to negotiate a settlement,” said private practice attorney Christopher P. Lyden, who is prosecuting the case because the district attorney’s office does not handle animal cruelty cases.

Whether or not a settlement is reached, Patterson said, the case will reconvene before Duncan, most likely in October.

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