Legal Impact for Chickens v. Case Farms
Legal Impact for Chickens is suing KFC-supplier Case Farms for its pattern of gross mismanagement and cruelty toward newborn chicks. Case Farms is a major U.S. poultry producer.
LIC’s complaint comes on the heels of a 2021 undercover investigation by animal advocacy group Animal Outlook.
The 2021 undercover investigation revealed a trend of cruel and deadly abuse at a Morganton, NC Case Farms hatchery that processes more than 200,000 chicks daily. Legal Impact for Chickens is accusing Case Farms of violating both industry standards and North Carolina law.
Case Farms has been documented knowingly operating faulty equipment, including a machine piston that repeatedly smashes chicks to death and a dangerous metal conveyor belt that traps and kills young birds. Case Farms was also documented crushing chicks’ necks between heavy plastic trays.
Case Farms supplies its chicken meat to KFC, Taco Bell, and Boar’s Head, among other customers. The poultry company breeds and kills almost 200 million birds each year.
Legal Impact for Chickens filed our Case Farms lawsuit on May 24, 2023 in North Carolina’s Burke County District Court. We’re grateful that Animal Outlook later agreed to join Legal Impact for Chickens as our co-counsel in the suit!
On August 4, 2023, Legal Impact for Chickens propounded our first set of discovery in the Case Farms lawsuit. Discovery is a process by which a party to a civil case can demand information from another party. Among other things, we are demanding permission to inspect a Case Farms hatchery.
Case Farms filed an answer and motion to dismiss on August 16, 2023.
Case Farms also began responding to our discovery requests. In doing so, Case Farms admitted “that it does not maintain any records of” occurrences where a chick was injured, harmed, maimed, or died.
On October 20, 2023, LIC filed a second amended complaint, detailing ongoing cruelty at Case Farms’s Morganton slaughterhouse. Among other things, the amended complaint adds allegations of chickens boiled alive.
On December 1, 2023, LIC responded in opposition to Case Farms’s motion to dismiss. LIC explained that the complaint, “sufficiently alleges that the Case Entities have and continue to violate North Carolina’s prohibition against animal cruelty by, among other things, trapping, crushing, and running over newly hatched chicks.”
The Burke County District Court held a hearing on Case Farms’s motion to dismiss on December 5, 2023. LIC presented oral argument. Unfortunately, the judge ruled from the bench that he would grant Case Farms’s motion to dismiss.
So Legal Impact for Chickens filed a notice of appeal to the North Carolina Court of Appeals on January 30, 2024. LIC hoped that the North Carolina Court of Appeals would agree that KFC-supplier Case Farms is not immune from the cruelty law and cannot escape liability for its behavior. LIC is honored to be represented by Dan Gibson, a North Carolina lawyer with an extensive track record of arguing—and winning—before the Court of Appeals.
LIC filed the record on appeal with the North Carolina Court of Appeals on August 1, 2024. And LIC filed our opening appellate brief on September 3, 2024. LIC’s brief explained: “[O]ur law declares Defendants’ animal cruelty unlawful. Our law . . . says how animals must be slaughtered—and boiling them alive is not a legal way to slaughter animals. 9 C.F.R. § 381.65; Treatment of Live Poultry Before Slaughter, 70 Fed. Reg. 56624-01, 56625 (Sept. 28, 2005). The law also prohibits abusing animals. Negligently killing or abusing an animal is criminal.”
Since then, farming groups, veterinarians, and a North Carolina animal rescue have all weighed in to stand up for birds.
The Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, The Cornucopia Institute, and Food Animal Concerns Trust submitted a joint amicus brief. The farming groups’ brief stated: “Defendants’ alleged conduct is not only unethical, but completely contrary to the professional standards of modern poultry farming.” Former North Carolina appellate judge Hon. Lucy Inman and colleague Katharine W. Batchelor represented these three amici.
North Carolina veterinarian Dr. Laura Cochrane, DVM, forensic veterinarian Dr. Martha Smith-Blackmore, DVM, and North Carolina nonprofit DEGA Mobile Veterinary Care submitted a second joint amicus brief. The veterinarians’ brief stated: “North Carolina takes animal cruelty seriously.” North Carolina appellate attorney Michael G. Schietzelt and colleague Luke Taylor represented the three veterinary amici.
North Carolina animal rescue Beautiful Together also submitted an amicus brief. Beautiful Together’s brief stated: “Legal Impact for Chicken’s complaint alleges shocking atrocities that, if committed against a dog or cat, would merit universal condemnation.” North Carolina appellate specialist Christopher S. Edwards represented Beautiful Together.
Case Farms filed its own appellate brief on November 4, 2024. Case Farms’s brief openly advocated for a reading of the law where, “‘[a] veterinarian can regularly perform major surgery on animals without anesthesia, and a hog farmer can routinely kill diseased hogs by torturing them to death.’”
LIC filed our appellate reply brief on November 21, 2024.
On February 11, 2025, the North Carolina Court of Appeals heard oral argument. Counsel for Legal Impact for Chickens explained: “The question in this case is whether a complaint alleging detailed, specific animal cruelty that violates the law states a claim under North Carolina's animal cruelty statute. Applying the law as written to the complaint as written says that it does.” He continued: “We would allege that intentionally running chicks over is cruel. I think there’s no argument that that’s not cruel. And we’d allege that, because that defeats the statutorily exempt purpose of producing poultry, there’s no way that that’s part of the process of producing poultry.”
Sadly, the appellate court affirmed on May 21, 2025.
So on June 24, 2025, LIC petitioned the North Carolina Supreme Court to hear our case. LIC was fortunate to receive consultation on our petition from North Carolina Board Certified Appellate Specialist M. Duane Jones—the attorney with the best recent track record for having petitions for discretionary review granted by the North Carolina Supreme Court! LIC’s petition urges: “This Court should allow discretionary review to enforce the law and protect farmers, restaurants, and consumers.”
The farming groups mentioned above, Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, The Cornucopia Institute, and Food Animal Concerns Trust then filed a second joint amicus brief, this one in support of LIC’s supreme court petition. North Carolina attorney Jon Ward authored the brief, urging the supreme court to take the case in order to support “careful and ethical farming.”
Case Farms, for its part, is discouraged the state supreme court from taking the animal-cruelty case. In its response to LIC’s petition, Case Farms argued that “[t]he subject matter of this appeal”—that is, the treatment of Case Farms’s chickens—“does not involve matters of significant public interest.” We couldn’t disagree more.
We now await word from the North Carolina Supreme Court. Stay tuned.