LION CUB CASE Ownership dispute will go to trial

The trial is scheduled Feb. 18 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Who owns a lion cub, used as the centerpiece of a story by a New York City newspaper, will apparently be settled at trial.
Magistrate Eugene Fehr of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court has denied a request to decide the case based solely on written legal briefs and transcripts of pretrial hearings.
The ruling means that a trial will go forward Feb. 18 as scheduled.
In a one-page decision handed down Friday afternoon, Fehr said the plaintiff's request for summary judgment addresses only money damages and does not get at ownership, which is the central issue of the lawsuit.
For that reason, he overruled the motion.
The cub, whose name is Boomerang, has been at Noah's Lost Ark, an exotic animal sanctuary in Berlin Township, since October. It was left there by a reporter from the New York Post, who said he was doing a story on how easy it is to obtain such animals.
At issue
Owners of Noah's Lost Ark say they think the reporter abandoned the cub there because it was sick and he no longer wanted to be responsible for it. They are fighting to keep the cub.
But William Long, who lives in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington, says the cub belongs to him, and he's asking the court to order its return to him. Long wants to send the cub to an exotic animal sanctuary in California.
Long has said he agreed to help the reporter buy the cub, and says he has a bill of sale showing that the animal belongs to him. He was not at Noah's Lost Ark the day the cub was dropped off.
Long says he bought the cub from a breeder in Wapakoneta, Ohio, for $1,000 on Oct. 11, 2003. Because the cub was only 8 days old at the time, a member of the American Sanctuary Association suggested that it be taken to Noah's Lost Ark until it was old enough to travel to the West Coast, Long says.
Ellen Whitehouse argues that when the cub arrived at her Bedell Road sanctuary Oct. 12, 2003, it was too sick to travel. She says that when the reporter left the animal behind, she thought he had no intention of coming back to get it.
Long's attorney filed a motion in January asking Fehr to rule in their favor without a trial. Attorneys for Noah's Lost Ark subsequently filed a motion opposing that request.
bjackson@vindy.com