SEATTLE — A King County Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that the University of Washington must pay People for Ethical Treatment of Animals nearly $540,000 in a lawsuit that revealed the university destroyed public records while under federal investigation.
The lawsuit centers on the UW’s Washington National Primate Research Center, after a seven-month investigation by The Arizona Republic last year, found the UW’s facility in Mesa, Arizona, mistreated monkeys and violated animal welfare laws.
The investigation revealed widespread disease that killed at least 47 monkeys over an eight-year span and that has the potential to compromise science at one of the nation’s largest facilities for breeding pigtailed macaques.
In December, after the report was published, the National Institutes of Health Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare launched a formal investigation into the UW’s Primate Research Center following a complaint filed by PETA.
The UW holds that it properly handled records and responded to PETA’s request, denying that it concealed or destroyed any documents, UW spokesperson Victor Balta said in an email Thursday. The university, he said, has processed millions of pages in response to public records requests every year and takes its “commitment” to provide public records seriously because it’s the law and “the right thing to do.”
The issue also attracted the attention of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who called on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the NIH’s oversight and approval of the funding grant this week.
PETA filed a public records lawsuit in 2020, alleging the university refused to turn over records and documents associated with experiments and breeding at the research center. The lawsuit eventually revealed that the primate research center routinely destroyed videotapes and photographs of experiments, according to the Lynnwood Times.
The ruling by Judge Suzanne Parisien, PETA said, shows that the UW failed to undertake an adequate search for records associated with experiments and documents detailing financial and leadership issues as well as animal deaths.
“Evading scrutiny of controversial experiments on monkeys by concealing and destroying public records has consequences. That’s the $540,000 message the King County Superior Court sent to the University of Washington today,” PETA said in a news release Thursday.
In 2021, the UW agreed to pay $100,000 to The Seattle Times to settle a separate lawsuit, which alleged the university failed to provide public records about coronavirus testing of student-athletes.
