SeaWorld Whale Torturers Now Facing Two Class Action Lawsuits
A new class action lawsuit has been filed against SeaWorld in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports. This is the second such suit filed against the company in the last month. The earlier suit was filed in California.
The Florida suit—filed by Gainesville attorney Paul Rothstein on behalf of Joyce Kuhl of South Carolina—alleges that, in 2013, Kuhl bought a $97 ticket to the Orlando "on a false understanding of the conditions and treatment of SeaWorld’s orcas, given SeaWorld’s omission of fact regarding the treatment, longevity and well-being of the orcas."
From the Guardian's report on Kuhl's suit:
The public court document accuses SeaWorld of keeping the whales in tanks that, compared with the open ocean where she says they regularly swim 100 miles a day, is like being confined to a single room for life.
The lawsuit details chlorine solution “many times stronger than household bleach” and other chemicals dissolved in the water where the whales are confined after being caught or bred, which makes their trainers’ eyes burn and forces the humans to have to stay out of the water on occasions.
“The orca, of course, have no such reprieve,” the court document states. “These orcas suffer in tiny, unnatural chemical tubs.”
The suit proposes to include anyone who bought a ticket to Seaworld Orlando in the last four years. "Although the company doesn’t release attendance figures for individual parks, it reported in 2014 that annual attendance for the three parks dropped 4.1 percent to 24.4 million visitors," the Sentinel reports.
According to the Guardian, if the class action suit is successful, damages would amount to at least $2 billion. SeaWorld's CEO resigned in December after the company's stock hit an all-time low.