ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 13, 1996 TAG: 9612130092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON AND LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITERS
A Roanoke jury ended the Puppy Land libel case on Thursday by rejecting the kennel owner's claims that WSLS (Channel 10) ruined his reputation and his business with overheated, distorted tales of dog abuse.
The jury deliberated about three hours before ruling in favor of Channel 10, reporter Kris Loyd and a former Puppy Land employee who accused the kennel of "outright meanness" toward its customers' pets.
The Roanoke TV station stood by its reporting throughout, relying on truth as its defense. To win the $16 million libel action, WSLS did not have to prove that every fact in its series of reports was accurate, only that the overall substance of its reporting was true.
"I'm elated," WSLS general manager Randy Smith said after the verdict. "This is something we're glad to have behind us."
Smith acknowledged that the four-day libel trial was a tense time for the station, but said he believed all along that WSLS would win. "I never had any concern about the accuracy of our reporting."
The kennel's owner, Chris Benson, refused comment about the verdict as six newspeople - including a Channel 10 camera crew - trailed him to the courthouse elevators. "It's been a long, long ...," he said, his voice trailing off. Then he stepped onto the elevator and left.
Before the jurors began deliberating, Benson's attorney, Barry Tatel, told them Loyd had hyped her stories to advance her young career, trying to turn what Tatel characterized as a rather routine state inspection into "Roanoke's Watergate."
Tatel acknowledged that it was true that Roanoke prosecutors and animal control officers were looking into what he described as the unfortunate death of a dog at Puppy Land. But he said there was no evidence Benson had abused the dog; Tatel said WSLS put a "spin" on the facts to make Benson look bad.
Loyd spent more than two hours on the witness stand Wednesday night, defending her story as each segment of the newscast was replayed for the jury.
She explained how she first got a tip from an animal rights activist about the death of Keshen, a Pomeranian who died while at Puppy Land after suffering a punctured lung and two broken ribs. After setting up a meeting with the dog's owners and the SPCA, she confirmed with the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services that they were investigating Puppy Land, Loyd testified.
After interviewing Benson, who confirmed that the dog had died but said he did not know how, Loyd went with her first story on Sept. 7, 1995.
Minutes after the story had aired, she said, the phone started ringing off the hook.
In the week that followed, Channel 10 reported that at least 20 former Puppy Land employees and customers had complained about the Franklin Road grooming and boarding service. One ex-employee, Amy Martin, told the station that she had seen Benson choke dogs and torment them with a stick when he was trying to groom them.
Benson said Channel 10's stories were so damaging he broke out in hives and couldn't sleep at night. His family also said he sat in a dark room because he was afraid to go out.
"I would drive home at night, and people would blink their headlights and shake their fists at me," Benson testified. "I couldn't go to the grocery story; I couldn't go anywhere. I would go home and hide every night."
Benson, who refused on-air comment to Channel 10, responded by suing the station's corporate owner, Loyd and Martin.
During the trial, Loyd's reporting came under sharp attack from Tatel. He focused in, for example, on Loyd's claim that "the commonwealth's attorney's office had about 500 pages of evidence to consider." In fact, Tatel said, there were well under 100 pages in what WSLS described as the "mountain of evidence" accumulated in the investigation.
Tatel called Greg Phillips, a former assistant commonwealth's attorney who was involved in the investigation, to testify about a conversation he had with Loyd.
"I told her that it could be 50 pages, or it could be 500 pages, or maybe nothing at all," Phillips testified.
To prove that its stories were substantially true, WSLS went on the attack.
Four witnesses called by the TV station testified that they had seen Benson choke, hit or otherwise mistreat dogs. All four identified themselves as former employees, although Benson claimed two of them had never worked for him. One former employee, Andrea Litvak, testified Benson would sometimes use tape to muzzle dogs that acted up during grooming. And he hit the dogs with his hand or his clippers, she said. "Anywhere was fair game," she said. "Head, face, body, legs."
Benson's attorney, Tatel, said the four witnesses were "all, at best, disgruntled ex-employees."
The TV station also brought in about a dozen customers who said their pets returned home from Puppy Land with mysterious cuts and bruises. Patricia Lowry of Salem testified that she took her two dogs, Laddie and Precious, to Puppy Land to be boarded for a week. She said she became uneasy when Benson refused to show her the kennel area, then warned her that the dogs might get wet when the cages were hosed down.
After leaving the dogs at Puppy Land, Lowry said, she had second thoughts and returned 10 minutes later to pick them up. They were soaking wet, she told the jury, "and they reeked of urine."
Benson's son and a part-time employee testified that they never saw Benson abuse dogs. Two customers testified their dogs had always been well cared for.
Dan Brown, the attorney for WSLS, acknowledged that docile dogs probably had been treated well at the kennel. But he argued that there was ample evidence of abuse against dogs who weren't perfectly behaved. He said Benson was simply harping on "picky little points" and attacking the TV station's employees to try to blunt "the truth they have told about him."
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