A prominent animal rescue organization is fighting to win back its ability to adopt dogs and cats to new homes after the state Department of Agriculture denied its pet vendor license in June. 

Live and Let Live Farm in Chichester and its owner, Teresa Paradis, filed a new lawsuit alleging the department violated the organization’s right to a hearing prior to its license denial and wrongly halted its adoption activities due to a bureaucratic dispute.

“Simply put, the department’s license denial is based in large measure on paperwork issues related to filling out forms,” the suit states. “Nowhere does the department assert that the plaintiff’s actions have caused any harm to public health at all.”

The legal action is the latest salvo in a multi-year dispute between the department and the farm, a 67-acre rescue organization that takes in animals ranging from horses to cats. Paradis claimed that the department retaliated against based on an interaction with a veterinary inspector back in 2019.

This June, the department notified Paradis that her annual application for a new license had been denied due to a string of violations ranging from a failure to submit completed veterinary records to lighting issues. Live and Let Live has been licensed as a pet vendor since 2003

Last week’s filing marked the second time Live and Let Live has sued the department in less than a year: Last August, the farm sued regarding a separate licensing dispute and that case remains ongoing. Paradis won an injunction from a judge in that case on June 14 that said the farm did not need a livestock license that the department claimed was required while the litigation remained pending. Her pet vendor license was denied two weeks later. 

Commissioner Shawn Jasper has denied the retaliation accusations and has characterized his department’s decision to deny Paradis’s pet vendor license application as a measure of last resort taken only after all other options were exhausted. Correspondence with Paradis shows that the department repeatedly warned her over the past year that she was at risk of losing her license.

Live and Let Live’s petition alleges the department violated the organization’s due process rights when it denied the pet vendor license application without first holding a hearing. The commissioner of agriculture may deny a pet vendor of its license “after notice to the licensee and opportunity for hearing,” according to state law.

At issue is what exactly an “opportunity for hearing” entails. Rick Lehmann, Paradis’s attorney, contends the hearing needs to have actually happened before the license denial goes into effect, while Jasper counters that the pet vendor must simply have the ability to request one.

“You have an opportunity for a hearing, but that doesn’t give you the option to continue to operate” until the hearing occurs, Jasper said in an interview Monday. “If that were the case, then my only option would be to suspend the license, which would be the same result because I couldn’t continue to let somebody operate if they weren’t conforming.”

Paradis’s request for a hearing was made early last month and the hearing is scheduled for September, though a pre-hearing conference will take place Tuesday. Live and Let Live has been unable to take in or adopt out dogs and cats since its previous license expired, on June 30.

The two sides have been locked in a contentious back-and-forth since 2019, when Paradis claims a veterinary technician demanded her farm take in horses that had been seized elsewhere and she refused. Jasper has said that he investigated the alleged incident and concluded it never happened at all.

Inspection reports and correspondence with Paradis from 2009 to 2024 show that the department began taking issue with Live and Let Live’s certificates of veterinary inspection a few months before the alleged horse incident in 2019. Live and Let Live is the largest interstate importer of dogs and cats in New Hampshire, according to Jasper, and the certificates of veterinary inspection, or CVIs, are required to transport animals across state lines. 

Since 2019, the department has levied at least $5,400 in fines, according to the documents provided by Jasper with the permission of Paradis, which were only a selection of the department’s file on the organization.

The 2019 letter in which Paradis received her first fine stated, among other things, that the CVIs for two litters of cats and dogs, which last for 30 days, expired two days before the animals arrived at Live and Let Live. Another letter, from 2021, stated that some CVIs “failed to include any record of vaccination for common canine viral diseases.” 

In a “letter of understanding” sent by Jasper to Paradis last July, the commissioner wrote that CVIs must be “complete and accurate” and that Live and Let Live “must work on improving the many paperwork issues noted in the department’s inspections over the past 4-5 years.”

In those inspection reports, Paradis has been written up for a variety of issues, including an illegible veterinary signature, missing dates and a missing veterinarian accreditation number, and for a veterinarian’s failure to write “see attached” when there are multiple pages of medical records.

Jasper said Monday that Live and Let Live’s fines and his department’s denial of her license are not a result of “stylistic things” noted on some inspection reports, but rather a product of a repeated failure to submit material information, which is relevant to the health of animals entering New Hampshire.

But the letter denying Paradis’s license was scant on details of the rescue’s violations and Jasper has previously pointed to the inspection reports as a reflection of what the violations are.

“The information is all there for them,” Jasper said in a previous interview, referring to the inspection reports. “If somebody is telling you they don’t know why [they failed an inspection], I’m going to suggest to you they’re not being honest with you.”

The denial letter stated that Paradis had failed to comply with minimum standards in the categories of lighting, visible signs of insects, shelter from sunlight, sanitation, classification and separation, protection from disease, and origin and medical history. In two of those categories – lighting and visible signs of insects – the most recent inspection report prior to the license denial, conducted in May, indicated Live and Let Live was actually in compliance.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Attorney General, which is representing the department, did not respond to a request for comment on Live and Let Live’s petition.

A hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for Friday.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.