Matthew Tully responds to online comments alleging conflict between law practice, SPCA
Reader comments on the spotlightnews.com story
`SPCA officers need a lift`
sparked a debate over whether attorney Matthew Tully’s involvement with the SPCA is a conflict of interest. Tully, however, said such a conflict does not exist, and he has never defended someone who has been charged with animal cruelty.
More than 50 posts appeared after one commenter said Tully, chief of the Schenectady County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and founder of Tully Rinckey PLLC, had allegedly encouraged animal abusers to buy his firm’s legal services on its website.
`There is no conflict of interest and I personally have never taken an animal cruelty case and I never will, but I am not going to make a blanket statement for Tully Rinckey, because Tully Rinckey is a separate entity than the SPCA,` said Tully.
If one of his law partners did decide to take on defending a person accused of animal cruelty, he said it would be a case that was out of SPCA’s coverage area.
`If one of my law partners wants to take an animal cruelty case in Rensselaer County, which the SPCA has no jurisdiction with, I am not going to interfere in that other than discourage it, but a full-time job at Tully Rinckey can’t interfere with my volunteer work and vise versa,` said Tully. `The SPCA is a law enforcement agency, and we make sure that personal agendas don’t interfere in law enforcement missions.`
At issue was a section of the Tully Rinckey website that has since been removed that said animal abuse cases can get a `great amount of public attention` due to the nature of the case. Information on the page indicated an animal defense attorney could help represent such a case in court. Further down, the webpage stated, `At Tully Rinckey, we have defended numerous animal abuse cases. The best defense is an experienced legal team, and we have the experience that counts.`
Tully said he was not aware the information was on the webpage.
`I was not personally aware that was on the webpage,` said Tully. `I have business partners that have business interests that could be different than my charitable interests.`
He said the information was removed when he learned about its contents about a month ago.
`That was developed by an outside contractor many years ago and wasn’t an issue,` said Tully. `Nobody ever even reported it until about a month ago when it was brought to my attention via anonymous phone call. We immediately took that paragraph off the Tully Rinckey website.`
Skinner added the web developer responsible for the page is no longer affiliated with Tully Rinckey.
Debate on spotlightnews.com website began when a reader encouraged others to do a search for a cached version of the removed page.
The first comment on the story from user named `Dochumes` said, `The SPCA Chief Matthew B. Tully actually encouraged ANIMAL ABUSERS to buy his legal services on his law firm website until Nov. 26, 2010 when it was brought to light by animal activists. The cached version of the page is still available on Google.`
Tully said it is unfair for people to attack him and his law firm. He noted he has donated a large amount of time and money to the SPCA and hasn’t profited from his role in the organization.
`There should be no correlation to the SPCA and Tully Rinckey,` said Tully. `There are people in the animal rights community that are not happy, and they want to instill a personal agenda in the SPCA that is not lawful.`
Google’s cached link for the website, a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Nov. 3, has been removed from Google’s search results, but The Spotlight was able to obtain a pdf version of the page before it was removed.“
