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(country music)
♪ Oh here kitty, kitty ♪
- So the best thing he's done,
it's worth just bringing up,
the music video "Here Kitty Kitty"
about Carol killin' her husband.
- You have to admit that these
songs are a little catchy.
(bright music)
- Hey, Legal Eagle's, it's
time to think a lawyer
because today we are covering "Tiger King"
and, oh man, this one almost broke me.
There are so many legal issues to go into,
so many legal acts.
These people really needed better lawyers.
If you don't know, "Tiger
King" is the documentary
about a bunch of zoo owners
who take care of big cats
like tiger, lions and ligers.
Feels a little sensationalized
because this is really only
the tip of the iceberg.
I had to do a whole
bunch of extra research
to dig into the various
court cases this created.
Truth is really stranger than fiction.
- About an hour ago, we had an incident
where one of the employees stuck their arm
through the cage and a
tiger tore her arm off.
I can give you your money back
or a I can give you a rain check.
- And, spoilers, we're
gonna go into the murder,
the conspiracy, the tigers
and even trademark law.
(dramatic music)
- So be sure to comment in
the form of an objection,
which I will either sustain or overrule
and stick around until
the end of the video,
where I give "Tiger King"
a grade for legal realism.
So, without further ado,
let's dig into "Tiger King".
(upbeat country music)
- Here is a fact
that may make you stop for a second,
there are more captive
tigers in the U.S. today
than there are in the
wild throughout the world.
- And you would not believe
how many sheriffs told me,
"Oh yeah, just down the street,
"there's a guy that has a lion"
or a guy down there that has a tiger.
They just feel very
strongly that these are mine
and nobody's gonna take 'em from me.
- Okay, so right off the bat,
let's talk about the
legality of owning big cats
because a ton of people
reached out to me and asked
how it was even possible
that these crazy people
could own these lions and tigers.
Well, the reason is because
there's no federal law
that actually bans the
private ownership of big cats.
There is a patchwork of state laws
that some ban outright
ownership of big cats.
Some require regulations
for owning big cats
but there's no federal law that
says you can't own big cats.
So whether you personally (chuckles)
could own a big cat like Joe Exotic
depends largely on what
state you live in and whether
that state prohibits the
ownership of wildlife.
Now there are some federal laws
that do provide some
regulation in this context
like the Endangered Species Act,
which prohibits the sale of big cats
without a permit from U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Department
and in 2016 there was actually a case
that applied the Endangered Species Act
not only to animals that
are found in the wild
but also to animals that
are held in captivity,
so that's a relatively
new part of this law.
And then there's the Animal Welfare Act,
which sets certain minimal standards
for actually caring for a lot
of these animals and big cats
and requires you to get a permit
to exhibit these things to the public.
And, interestingly, Tim Stark,
who is featured later
on in this documentary,
had his permit permanently revoked
by the federal government,
so he can't exhibit animals
to the public anymore.
And it probably won't
surprise you that Oklahoma
has some of the laxest
laws in the United States
when it comes to owning exotic animals,
which is why Joe Exotic was able
to have his zoo in Oklahoma.
(gentle music)
- There's always been a rumor out there
that Doc Antle euthanizes his
cubs when he's done with them.
- [Carol] We've had
whistle blowers come to us
and say that they've heard
a gunshot in the middle
of the night and the
next day there's no cat.
But they don't know where the cat went.
- Yeah, so there are
all kinds of allegations
in this documentary,
not just that Joe Exotic
but other zoo owners
would kill the big cats
once they were no longer young enough
to be handled by the general public.
You can imagine that once
they get to be a certain age,
(laughs lightly) they become
ferocious killing machines
and are no longer cuddly animals
that you can hold in your hands.
And so once they lose
their economic value,
effectively these zoo
owners would euthanize them
and, under most
circumstances, it is illegal
to kill big cats under
the Animal Welfare Act.
So, spoiler alert, one of the things
that Joe is eventually
convicted of is a violation
of this act because he's accused
of killing a bunch of
tigers without a permit.
(gentle music)
- They said that Joe had shot
five tigers and they dug
'em up and found the skulls.
- So there's a big
difference between being able
to actually legally own
one of these animals
and being able to take care of it
or being able to euthanize it.
Those are very separate questions.
(gentle music)
- And I told Joe,
"How are you gonna make money?
"How you gonna make money?
How you gonna make money?"
He didn't have any other way to make money
other than cub pettin',
so he had to breed.
(crowd oohs and ahhs)
- Oh my God.
- They're only a hour old.
- This is another question
that kept cropping up
in terms of whether you're
allowed to breed these big cats.
And under federal law, as long
as you have a USDA license,
you can in fact breed big cats,
though some states in
particular have banned
breeding for obvious reasons
because it's ripe for abuse.
So, again, there's a
difference between federal law
and state law in terms of whether
you're allowed to breed them.
There's no federal law
that says you can't,
as long as you have a permit
but a lot of states do
in fact prohibit that.
(suspenseful music)
(dial tone)
(phone numbers beeping)
- [Dispatcher] 911, what's your emergency?
- [Woman] We've got an
employee that was attacked
by a tiger and he's hurt bad.
- The arm is completely gone,
we do not have time to wait.
(animal squawking)
So get your gurney here.
Get everything out of the driveway.
- [Man] Is he all right?
- (scoffs) This is such a sad affair,
where the employee was
so grievously injured.
In terms of whether the zoo is liable,
states again differ in terms
of how they impose liability
for injuries that are caused
by these exotic animals.
Some states hold the zoos
what' called strictly liable,
which means that, as long
as as there is an injury
related to the animals,
the zoo is responsible
regardless of whether they
were negligent or not.
Other states require that the
zoos be actually negligent
in terms of an employee
being injured or not.
You could imagine that
(chuckles), based on some
of the the things that
are in this documentary,
it probably wouldn't be
too hard to show that Joe
and some of the other staff at the zoo
might have been negligent in terms
of allowing this person to be injured.
- I've been doing this 20
years, never even been bit.
(tiger growls)
(chain link rattles)
(man grunts) It's okay.
- But we don't have all of the facts
in this particular case.
I think this documentary made it a point
not to show too much of the footage
related to this employee being injured.
There might be defenses the zoo might have
like contributory negligence
or assumption of risk
where perhaps the employee
might not have been
exercising all of the caution
that she should've been using.
So it's not necessarily
an open and shut case
and just because you have a legal claim
or a lawsuit on your hands
doesn't necessarily mean
that you're gonna recover anything.
There've been so many
lawsuits against Joe Exotic
and the G.W. Zoo that
it's entirely possible
that even if this employee won the lawsuit
that she might not be
able to recover anything.
That's called being judgment proof
and it's, unfortunately, a sad reality
where sometimes the guilty party
just doesn't have any funds to compensate
an injury for someone that deserves it.
(gentle music)
- This is probably gonna get me in trouble
but we used to eat off the meat truck.
(truck beeping)
- It was a truck that picked up meat
(Devin laughs lightly)
from all these Walmarts
in the area that had expired.
Joe would let them pick
out what they wanted first
and they'd carry bags of
this expired meat and foods
back to their mobile home
and that's what they ate.
- Oh my God, this violates so
many Health and Safety codes
and OSHA in so many different ways,
I'm not even gonna go into it.
This is actually worse than
Willy Wonka's sweatshop factory,
which I covered in an
episode of "Laws Broken",
so if you wanna know how many laws
"Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory" broke,
you can check out that episode.
Spoiler alert, it's a lot of laws.
(suspenseful music)
- I was the power of attorney
for both of them.
- [Interviewer] Who was
the power of attorney
on the new documents Carol produced?
- Not me.
That new power of attorney gave
her control over the estate.
- Ah, the will and the power of attorney
being changed in a very suspicious way,
right before Carol's husband goes missing.
At first blush, this I
think looks pretty terrible
but I don't think that
this is nearly as bad
as it appears and hear me out on this.
As it happens, you cannot execute
a durable power of attorney
without two witnesses
and a notary and the
notary will actually record
that they witnessed the
signatures being provided.
Now that law actually changed in 2011,
where now under Florida durable
and nondurable powers of attorney
have to be with two
witnesses and a notary.
Before that, only durable
powers of attorney.
Meaning that a power of
attorney that applies
when someone is incapacitated
or goes missing, for example.
So I think the law at the time required
two witnesses and a notary,
which means it's unlikely
that there was any
foul play involved and her husband
would have had to have signed off
on this particular power of attorney.
So it probably was not
executed posthumously.
Now, on top of that,
there is this potentially
suspicious language about kicking in
when the person disappears,
that doesn't seem like
something that often happens.
- [Interviewer] Isn't it suspicious
that the power of attorney
says upon my disappearance?
Is that normal verbiage?
- I have, in 37 years, never seen it say
or disappearance, never have.
- I actually did a little bit of research
to find out if this
disappearance language is normal.
And, as it happens, I was able to find
another power of attorney that mentions
disappearance, which makes sense.
If someone is incapacitated,
if they go into a coma,
if they disappear, if they are killed,
that's when you want a
durable power of attorney,
for someone to be able to take care
of the things and the estate.
The documentary seems to indicate
that it's only applicable
in disappearance.
I think that they sort of
cherry picked this one section.
I would bet that the rest
of the power of attorney
mentions a whole bunch
of different situations
where the power of attorney kicks in.
So I could be wrong, I
don't have all of the facts,
but I don't think this
is nearly as suspicious
as it's portrayed in the documentary.
- I got a phone call stating
that the office alarm
had gone off and Carol was there.
Her and Kenny Farr had
cut the locks on the gate,
(suspenseful music)
cut the locks on the office.
The will and the power of attorney,
they were all taken out
of the office that day.
- So we talked about the potentially
suspicious language of
the power of attorney.
Now a lot of those accusations
came from Anne McQueen,
Don's old assistant, who talks
about a lot of these things.
And certainly casts
aspersions on Carol Baskin.
Interestingly, there was
a conservatorship case
for Don's estate that accuses Anne McQueen
of embezzling $600,000
from Don's properties.
If indeed these allegations are true,
that certainly paints her aspersions
in a different light and would explain
why Carol did not want Anne accessing
all of the documents that
were in Don's office.
But, this is Florida, so I assume some
light embezzlement is probably okay.
- Joe decided that the way
he would get back at us
was to rename his traveling show
Big Cat Rescue Entertainment.
(suspenseful music)
Here's our logo, all right,
and here is what he started using.
- All right, now we get
into the real sexy stuff,
the trademark infringement cases.
So I had to look into this.
There were federal lawsuits filed.
There were some trademark cases
and there were some copyright cases.
And, from what I can tell, the
trademark infringement suit
is basically as it's
portrayed in the documentary.
Carol Baskin had the
trademark to Big Cat Rescue
for a very long time and then it appears
that Joe Exotic wanted to
(chuckles) create confusion
between Big Cat Rescue and
his own entertainment company.
- Joe started realizing
if he made his name
close to the Big Cat Rescue,
when they google it, it
might pull him up first.
- You're not allowed to do that.
That's the entire point of trademark.
Trademark exists to
prevent consumer confusion
and trademark is not
necessarily the graphics,
although it can include the graphics,
but it also includes
just the wordmark itself.
So Big Cat Rescue versus Big
Cat Rescue Entertainment,
that's gonna be a slam dunk trademark case
for trademark infringement,
false designation of origin
and unfair competition.
It's not surprising then that Carol
got a judgment for close
to a million dollars,
$953,000 because Joe couldn't help himself
and he probably admitted
that he tried (chuckles)
to create confusion
between the two entities.
(gentle music)
- The one lawsuit
was about the rabbit photo
and the other lawsuit was
about a bunch of photos
where he would take a picture
of Carol and take her head
and put it on the body
of a man in a diaper.
- So these copyright cases
and there are at least
two of them, possibly
three copyright cases,
are a little different
from the trademark case
that we just talked about.
So this may or may not be meritorious
but Joe, obviously, would use graphics
in his reality TV show
and his internet videos
and he may not have been
using them in a fair use way.
- Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman.
I'm Joe Exotic and we're gonna make
an honest woman out of this (beeps).
- And what Carol did is sort
of diabolical and genius
because what she did is
she went and tracked down
the people that took the
photos that Joe used.
So maybe they were posted on
Facebook or on the internet
and she would track down the people
who took the photos of Big
Cat Rescue or her husband
or herself and she would buy
the rights to those photos.
She would get what's called
a copyright assignment
and then, with the ownership
of the copyright procured,
she then sued Joe for
copyright infringement
for using the photos that
then she had the rights to.
Carol Baskin, credit where
credit is due, it's clever.
(gentle music)
- She'll never get
a million dollars out of
me, I don't own anything.
I don't own anything.
This bus is not mine,
those cars are not mine.
(chuckles) I'm not stupid.
(laughs)
- Okay, this may be my favorite
part of all of "Tiger King".
You can keep the conspiracy
to commit murder,
you can keep the tigers and lions,
my favorite thing are
the fraudulent transfers.
- Joe kept thinking if
he changed the name,
it would just derail him and derail him,
well it didn't, they just
moved it to another lawsuit.
- Contrary to what Joe and Jeff Lowe say,
you can't avoid judgments
or avoid lawsuits
just by changing the name of the company
or just taking the assets and
moving them somewhere else.
That's called a fraudulent transfer.
It creates what's called
a constructive trust
over the transferred assets.
So if you take possession of those assets
that were fraudulently transferred,
the person who is rightfully
owning that property,
which as we saw, Carol got a judgment
for almost a million dollars,
so she could've gotten almost everything
that the G.W. Zoo owned,
that person can then claw
back all of that property
that was transferred somewhere else.
So what I think happened here
is that Joe Exotic's mom,
Shirley Schreibvogel, wasn't sued per se
but what it looks like is
that Joe put some documents
in front of her where it, on paper,
transferred the assets of the zoo itself
or the things that zoo owned
and put it in her name.
(suspenseful music)
- I went down to the
courthouse and got a
copy of one of the deeds
and a I said, "Grandma, are
you aware that this happened?"
And she said, "Well, he
shoved a paper in front of me
"and told me to sign it and I
didn't think anything of it."
- Obviously, when they
signed these documents
and engaged in the,
knowingly or unknowingly,
in a fraudulent transfer with Joe,
their involvement almost
certainly required a lawyer
and it really seemed like
she rubber stamped things
that she really shouldn't
have been rubber stamping.
(gentle music)
- Shirley's name
is on everything, the
trailers, the water bill,
the electric bill, the cable bills.
- Yeah, you can't get away with that.
And I'm sorry that Joe
seemingly took advantage of her
but Shirley Schreibvogel did
sign a settlement agreement
with Big Cat Rescue Corp, which is the one
owned by Carol Baskin, not
the fake one owned by Joe,
where she agreed that she had
engaged in these transfers.
So let that be a lesson to
all those parents out there,
don't sign paperwork
just because your kids
put it in front of you.
They might be engaging in fraud,
especially if they live in Florida.
(suspenseful music)
- One time I was on the park
and Joe's talking to me, he says,
"Hey, I hear you can take care
"of a problem for me in Florida."
I said, "What problem would that be?"
He says, "Carol Baskin."
I said, "No, I can't."
- All right, now we're getting into
the real juicy stuff here, the
conspiracy to commit murder.
Now, you might be wondering,
when does idle chitchat
go from mere conversation into
a conspiracy to commit murder.
Well, under 18 U.S.C.
1958, which is the use
of interstate commerce facilities
in the commission for murder for hire,
it applies whenever someone travels
or causes another to travel between states
and that's sort of a
relic of the federalism
and that a lot of federal statutes
only apply in interstate situations,
so that they don't interfere
with state-based laws.
But, as long as you use the
mail or interstate commerce
with intent that a murder be committed
in violation of the laws
of the United States,
or if you exchange
anything of pecuniary value
with anyone who conspires
to commit such an act,
you're guilty of effectively
attempted murder.
And under 18 U.S.C. 371,
which is the federal statute
that deals with conspiracy,
all that you need to do
is conduct one overt act in
furtherance of that conspiracy.
And that overt act does not need
to be one of the elements of that offense.
So it's a pretty low burden.
Certainly paying $3000 would definitely
be considered an overt act in furtherance
of a conspiracy to commit murder.
But I think this documentary is conflating
a couple different things.
There are the things that are
required to prove the crime
and then there are the things
that the U.S. attorneys want
so that they have an easy
time proving the crime
and those are not
necessarily the same things.
(suspenseful music)
- When I do become psychotic,
that's my going to Tampa gun.
- Really just the fact that the guy
started driving toward Carol Baskin
probably would of been
enough in its own right
to convict both of these people
of conspiracy to commit murder.
(suspenseful music)
- I was like, "Hey Joe,
"this is my guy. This is the
guy who'll whack Carol for ya."
"Really? How much?"
- You know, when I said
I was gonna do a reaction
to "Tiger King", I got so
many comments from people
that said that Joe was set up
and that the government
had committed entrapment.
While entrapment is a defense,
it's very, very rarely applicable.
And a valid entrapment
defense has two elements.
One, you have to prove that the government
induced the crime itself.
And, two, you have to
prove the defendant's lack
of predisposition to engage
in the criminal conduct.
In other words, that the
government put the idea
of the crime itself into
the defendant's head.
And that's just simply not the case here,
at least based on what we're
seeing in this documentary.
I don't think Joe has
any reasonable grounds
to claim that he was a
victim of entrapment.
(country music)
♪ Well everything was fine ♪
♪ Just as sweet as wine ♪
♪ But her husband went and disappeared ♪
♪ But then it got a little
crazy, got a little hazy ♪
♪ And the cop said, "There's
something wrong here" ♪
♪ Oh here kitty, kitty ♪
- So the best thing he's done,
it's worth just bringing up,
the music video "Here Kitty Kitty"
about Carol killin' her husband.
- You have to admit that these
songs are a little catchy.
(chuckles) A lot of
people were asking about
whether Carol Baskin could
have a defamation claim
against Joe Exotic, based on
the fact that he's basically
accusing her of killing her ex-husband.
Funny story about these songs,
Joe isn't the one singing in these songs.
The songs were actually
recorded by two individuals
named Vince Johnson and Danny Clinton,
who are two musicians
from Washington state.
Apparently they reached out
to Joe Exotic (chuckles)
and, from my understanding,
they were paid in influence.
I don't think that Carol Baskin
could have a defamation claim
based on the content of these songs.
It's sort of Joe's opinion.
There's some factual basis for it.
I'm not sure that you
could say he was negligent
in making this claim,
if it is indeed false,
and you might argue that Carol Baskin
is a limited purpose
celebrity and therefore
you would have to use the
higher standard for defamation.
I don't think that there's
gonna be much of a claim here.
(suspenseful music)
- And for after just three
short hours, nearly four hours,
the jury came back finding
Joseph Maldonado-Passage
guilty on all 19 counts,
two of those largest ones
for the alleged use of interstate commerce
for murder for hire.
- Guilty.
- I don't know about you but,
after watching "Tiger King",
I had to find out what happened
to all these people after the show ended.
For better or worse, Joe
Exotic is in federal prison
in Texas, where he's currently suffering
from an infection of the coronavirus.
Coronavirus is a really terrible thing
and it's infecting a ton of people in jail
because they're in close quarters.
I highly recommend
following Scott Hechinger,
who's a public defender in Brooklyn.
He's been at the forefront of advocating
for prisoners rights and
I think it's definitely
something you should look into,
'cause it's not just something
that affected Joe Exotic.
Joe has filed a lawsuit seeking
nearly 94 million dollars
in damages against the
Department of Interior,
the prosecutors and the
documentarians behind the show.
He's going to lose that
suit, I feel very confident.
The G.W. Zoo is still
open and is being run
by Jeff Lowe, or at least is was open
until it was also shut down
for coronavirus reasons.
As you can imagine, a lot
of people wanna go there
because of the infamy of this show.
And because we live in
the dumbest timeline,
Joe is seeking a presidential pardon
and President Trump is
actually considering it.
- I'll take a look.
Is that Joe Exotic? That's Joe Exotic?
- Why?
(bright music)
But now, let's give "Tiger
King" a grade for legal realism.
(gavel banging)
(air whooshes)
The characters are completely
unbelievable, they're mere caricatures,
the dialogue is insane
and the factual scenarios
are completely ridiculous.
It would never happen.
(air whooshes)
So I give "Tiger King" an F
for legal realism.
(record scratches)
What? What's that?
Oh, oh, it's real life, all right.
Shut it down, shut it down.
- I am never gonna
financially recover from this.
- Now, even though this video is fair use
commentary and criticism on
this ridiculous documentary,
I still get copyright claims all the time
because people abuse the legal system.
The only thing worse than
being mauled by a tiger
is getting demonetized, which
is why my creator friends
and I teamed up to build our own platform
where creators don't need to worry
about demonetization or
the dreaded algorithm.
It's called Nebula and we're thrilled
to be partnering with CuriosityStream.
If you like "Tiger
King", you'll love Nebula
and CuriosityStream,
because Nebula is a place
where creators can do
what they do best, create.
It's a place where we can both
(air whooshes)
house our content ad-free
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In fact, if you liked this
episode of "Real Lawyer Reacts",
the version I put on
Nebula removes this ad
and contains a blooper reel.
(beeps)
Expired meat, delicious.
(fingers snapping)
One more time, here we go.
Nebula features tons of YouTube's
top educational creators
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Knowing Better, Real
Engineering and TierZoo
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And we get to collaborate in ways
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like Tom Scott's amazing
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where he pits a bunch of famous
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in psychological experiments
where they can either
work together or profit individually.
It's so, so good.
So what does this have to
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Well, as the go-to source
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And, to be clear, that Nebula subscription
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Since we've gotta stay inside anyway,
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So do you agree with my grade
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Leave your objections in the comments
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I'll see you in court.
