A judge has temporarily blocked the city of Long Beach from evicting the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles from an animal shelter the two sides share near El Dorado Regional Park.
The ruling pausing the potential eviction is the first legal domino to fall in the spat between the two sides that burst into public view four months ago when Long Beach announced it would kick out the well-known animal welfare nonprofit.
SPCALA filed a lawsuit against the city in March, asking a judge to block its eviction permanently after Long Beach set a March 26 deadline for the organization to vacate the facility the two have shared since 2001.
On Wednesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Doreen Boxer granted SPCALA’s request for a preliminary injunction, which pauses the potential eviction until the lawsuit is resolved.
Boxer found that “preserving the status quo” of the arrangement between the two sides for the meantime “would cause little harm” to Long Beach.
For its part, the SPCALA argued it would be significantly damaged if it were forced to leave while a trial played out, saying it would “lose possession and use of a property in which it has invested over $10 million for an indeterminate period of time until the matter is able to be resolved by this court,” the organization’s lawyers wrote.
A spokesperson for Long Beach said the city was “disappointed in this outcome.”
“This is just one step in the larger litigation at-hand, and we will continue to stand firm in our reasons for terminating our contract with SPCALA,” Jen De Prez, the spokesperson, wrote in a statement.
The court fight marks a major deterioration in a long-running relationship between SPCALA and Long Beach. Their partnership on the shelter, which cares for roughly 4,000 animals per year, was scheduled to last until at least July 1, 2053, according to a lease agreement the two signed in 1998.
Under the agreement, SPCALA paid Long Beach $120 annually and split the operational costs of the shared campus 50-50.
In exchange, SPCALA was meant to construct the facility, handle a majority of the animal adoption efforts and pay for groundskeeping and maintenance.
In an eviction notice sent to SPCALA, an attorney for the city accused the nonprofit of taking over too many common areas at the facility, causing a rodent infestation through improper management of the building and neglecting its primary duty of adopting out animals that the city took in.
According to SPCALA’s court papers, the organization and the city “enjoyed a mutually beneficial and respectful relationship” until 2019, when the city hired a new manager for its animal care services department.
SPCALA claimed conditions on the city’s side of the facility “quickly deteriorated into a hoarding situation, with issues of overcrowding, poor animal husbandry, hazardous conditions and more,” SPCALA lawyers contend in their court papers.
They also disputed the city’s claim that they stopped taking on animals for adoption.
In a statement after the ruling Wednesday, SPCALA President Madeline Bernstein said the judge’s decision exposed “the city’s strongarm tactics, manufactured allegations and efforts to cover-up its own ineptitude and failures.”