Jonathan Lovvorn is a vice president & chief counsel for Animal Protection Litigation & Research at HSUS and a former partner at the Washington D.C. law firm Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal. He is married to Nancy Perry, HSUS’s former vice president of government affairs (now with ASPCA), with whom he has taught a seminar on animal law at The George Washington University School of Law.

Lovvorn is one of two HSUS lawyers—the other being Kimberly Ockene—named as defendants in a federal RICO lawsuit filed by Feld Entertainment alleging torts such as racketeering, wire fraud, and mail fraud among a cadre of animal rights defendants.

According to court filings, Feld alleges that HSUS, Lovvorn, and Ockene played a hand:

HSUS is in it as an independent racketeer.…They sent six payments to WAP that were earmarked for Tom Rider, and those payments were made, as we showed, out of a HSUS bank account, on HSUS stationary, a HSUS check sent by a HSUS employee, Jonathan Lovvorn, who had been a partner in that firm before he came over there [to HSUS]. So the idea that they didn’t know about this, that they were innocent, that they were duped, it’s ridiculous. They were in the middle of this.

They are also clearly a conspirator, as is Lovvorn and Ockene. In United States v. Salinas…you just have to further the object of the endeavor, intend to further the object of the endeavor. How is that not satisfied by HSUS making six of the payments? How is that not satisfied by Lovvorn and Ockene being counsel of record in a fraudulent case, and proceeding in a fraudulent case, which is what we’ve alleged; but in addition to what we already know, participating in the obstructions themselves, and also participating in any payments.

Background: VP, Animal Protection Litigation, Humane Soc. of the US; former partner (representing animal rights groups), Meyer Glitzstein & Crystal LLC; Lecturer in Law, George Washington Univ. Law School; former attorney-adviser, U.S. Dept. of the Interior