The city of Los Angeles is seeking a court order preventing a Los Angeles Zoo nonprofit established more than 60 years ago to help the city operate and develop the attraction from taking $50 million in surplus funds meant to benefit the zoo and use it instead for the nonprofit’s own benefit or interests.
The motion filed by the city on Tuesday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kerry Bensinger stems from a lawsuit the city brought Dec. 20 against the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA), alleging breach of contract and the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing as well as breach of fiduciary duty and conversion. The city also seeks an accounting and a judge’s declaration of the rights and duties of the parties.
GLAZA manages at least $50 million in an endowment and in other accounts made up of money that GLAZA raised on behalf of the city for the zoo’s benefit, the City Attorney’s Office states in its filing.
“Unless a preliminary injunction issues, GLAZA can and will dissipate Zoo funds for its post-contract operating and other expenses to the detriment of the zoo,” the City Attorney’s Office states in its court papers in advance of a scheduled May 14 hearing.
GLAZA also “can and will interfere with zoo operations, exercising control over the use and allocation of zoo assets,” according to the City Attorney’s Office’s pleadings.
A GLAZA representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the filing.
The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association was founded in 1963. Last May, the parties entered an interim agreement to run through June 30 of this year designed to ensure the continuity of critical programs and services while the city completes the proposal process for the zoo’s long-term management, the suit states.
But GLAZA subsequently amended its articles to divide its loyalties and reserve the right to distribute assets other than the zoo if GLAZA winds down or dissolves, even though the organization was “effectively only ever permitted to raise funds on behalf of the city for the benefit of the zoo,” the suit states.
GLAZA also wrote the city a letter that “appeared to claim some exclusive interest over the zoo’s endowment” and asserted, among other things, that if anyone from the city believed that the city maintains any authority over the allocation of GLAZA’s endowment, they are “grossly mistaken,” the suit states.
GLAZA did not reply when the city sent the group a July letter reminding its members that the organization’s “very formation was for the exclusive purpose of assisting and aiding the city to benefit the zoo,” according to the suit.
On Oct. 17, GLAZA advised the city that the organization would continue in some capacity separate from the city after the interim agreement expires, according to the suit, which further alleges that GLAZA engaged in a “rapid succession of acts in breach of its contractual, good faith and fiduciary obligations to the detriment of the city and the zoo.”
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GLAZA unilaterally canceled the 2025 Beastly Ball, the zoo’s largest and most important annual fundraising event, which GLAZA is under contract to stage, according to the suit, which also alleges GLAZA used the city’s own intellectual property to spread communications criticizing the city and the zoo.
GLAZA also refused to provide member, donor, volunteer and other data, even though the city is the exclusive owner of all such information, the suit states.
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