OUR OPINIONS
Humane Society overreacting

The Atlanta Humane Society and its executive director, Bill Garrett, ought to drop their lawsuits against two critics and stop wasting time and energy trying to protect their own reputations. They're only making matters worse, for themselves and for the animals they are supposed to be protecting.

Garrett complains that he and the society have been unfairly maligned, and to some degree he's no doubt right. Some of the comments allegedly directed at Garrett in an Internet List-serv - calling him "Mr. Kill" and demanding that the society hire "a leader who does not delight in slaughtering pets for fun and profit" - were clearly over the top and out of line. There's a cruelty in those comments that reflects poorly on whoever wrote them.

But by filing a lawsuit against the alleged author, Garrett and the society have only ensured that those comments reached a far wider audience. And their second lawsuit, filed against a former employee who criticized society operations in a TV news report, is even more ill-considered.

The humane society is the oldest nonreligious charitable agency in the city, according to Garrettt. The difficult and necessary job that it performs in the community makes it the natural focus of public attention, and its public nature is compounded the the society's dependence on public charitable donations. Furthermore, the society has a contract with Fulton County for animal control and investigating animal-cruelty cases.

Whether Garrett likes it or not, those factors make his job performance a matter of public concern, and expose both him and the society to possible public criticism. If that cruticism is sometimes unfair, it comes with the territory. He needs to get used to it.