Berosini ordered to pay

Friday, July 20, 2001 | 11:15 a.m.

A federal magistrate in Las Vegas has ordered entertainer Bobby Berosini to pay an animal rights group for expenses it incurred while trying to force the orangutan trainer to pay a judgment against him.

The action by Magistrate Lawrence Leavitt in a 13-page ruling filed Tuesday is the latest in a 12-year feud between the showman and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA maintains that Berosini long delayed paying the organization a $350,000 judgment against him stemming from a libel suit Berosini originally filed after PETA secretly videotaped Berosini beating one of his orangutans backstage at the Stardust's Lido de Paris show. He has since paid the judgment.

PETA spokeswoman Ingrid Newkirk, from her Norfolk, Va., offices, on Thursday said because Berosini balked at paying, PETA incurred"hundreds of thousand of dollars" in legal and other costs to collect the judgment.

Leavitt's order says Berosini has to pay "reasonable expenses incurred, including attorneys fees, in conducting discovery on and making all motions raising discovery issues."

Leavitt ordered PETA to submit its proposed expenses no later than Aug. 3 and for Berosini to respond with a sworn declaration no later than Aug. 13.

Leavitt's order says, "shortly after the Nevada Supreme Court reversed Berosini's jury award (in January 1994), the Berosinis ... began to engage in a series of dubious financial transactions involving their personal and corporate assets," the order says.

In February 2000, The court ordered Bobby Berosini and his wife, Joan, to "repatriate all of the funds in question," court papers say.

Berosini, who still resides in Las Vegas and still keeps orangutans, got a partial victory when Leavitt denied PETA's motions to hold the Berosinis in contempt of court and to compel production of the couple's tax returns.

After copies of the videotape showing Berosini striking an orangutan with what appeared to be a rod were broadcast nationwide, Berosini sued PETA for defamation and in 1990 won a multimillion dollar judgment from a Clark County District Court jury.