The first volley in a legal fight over whether Long Beach can evict the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles from its animal shelter has been pushed to another day.
Since last month, the two sides have been embroiled in a public dispute over the status of an agreement to share the city’s animal shelter facility near El Dorado Regional Park.
That battle went to court this week when SPCALA filed a lawsuit against the city seeking to block Long Beach’s plan to evict the well-known animal welfare nonprofit.
The city had set a March 26 deadline for SPCALA to vacate the facility the two have shared since 2001, but SPCALA sought a temporary restraining order to stay the eviction. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Doreen Boxer determined at a hearing Thursday that the restraining order wasn’t necessary because Long Beach has not yet brought legal action to enforce the eviction, according to Long Beach City Attorney Dawn McIntosh.
Unless SPCALA leaves voluntarily (which they’ve given no indication they will) or the city of Long Beach seeks a court action forcibly removing them, it appears they’ll remain past the original March 26 deadline. The next step in the process will be a hearing on whether a judge will issue a preliminary injunction — which would pause the potential eviction until the SPCALA’s lawsuit is resolved.
The court fight marks a major deterioration in a long-running relationship between SPCALA and Long Beach. Their partnership 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 handle a majority of the animal adoption efforts and pay for groundskeeping and maintenance.
In an eviction notice 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 LBACS.
SPCALA claimed conditions on the LBACS 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.
The city “has no right to terminate” the lease, SPCALA lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
A hearing on a preliminary injunction in SPCALA’s lawsuit is scheduled for April 23.