…what you just quoted me as saying was that “everything you need to know about this case has already been linked to in this thread.” That includes, but is not just limited to, the plaintiffs complaint.
We were specially talking about the “legal owner of the goat being compelled to take something to auction if they decide that they no longer want to do so.”
If this were a rule of the fair, it would be in the rules of the fair.It isn’t in the rules of the fair, it doesn’t appear to be in the contract either. But even if it was in the contract, it wouldn’t matter, because as a minor they have the right to disaffirm the contract.
…the child was the legal owner. The mother doesn’t appear to be a party to the contract: just certifies that the child has read and understood the contract.
Maybe. Maybe mom should understand that livestock often means dinner on the hoof and look up what terminal sale means before deciding how cute her little girl will look parading around with a goat in an arena. If her child just wanted a pet goat, there’s nothing preventing mom from simply buying one for her, keeping it at home, and not entering it in a show with a terminal sale.
Even better, perhaps mom should have taken her little girl over to a dog show and see if she could learn to handle dogs. Mom can still fulfill her dream of, I mean, watch her daughter traipse around looking cutesy with an animal while being judged and the dogs don’t get eaten after the show. Win-win.
I wonder if the fair official(s) telling the girl she couldn’t withdraw from the auction was fraudulent. Also, googling shows that California recognizes damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress which may be relevant here pending additional facts.
I don’t think that’s fair. We don’t know what the mother’s original motivations were, nor the daughter’s. I think it’s far more likely that the daughter had a vague notion of the reality of rearing and exhibiting livestock, and as she learned, went more toward the “animals are like pets” than “animals are like widgets” model. This is an entirely appropriate bit of self- and occupational knowledge for a child to gain as a part of this exercise: knowing, experientially, what you do NOT want to do is pretty important.
(The Fair’s leadership seems to be of the animals-are-like-widgets model. I’m not saying it’s the only one that leads to rearing animals for meat: personally, I think you can love animals and still rear them for (humane) slaughter and then eat them.)
I feel like all this arguing over the nature of the contract and ownership is missing the point. The mere fact that there is an argument to be made over ownership makes this a civil matter, not a criminal one. Immediately turning to the police to violently repossess a goat over a $63 fee (“the principle” is not a legal concept) is lunacy. Any fair director should be smart enough to weigh “the principle” against “the bad press” and admit it’s easier for everyone to let a kid back out of her contract regardless of who is right or wrong.
I’m a bit steamed by some of the comments regarding the mother. I think that she is painfully aware of the mistake she made. She has to pick up the pieces now that her daughter’s beloved pet was seized and slaughtered. I can’t imagine how difficult that is for both mother and child. Assuming that mom is just some puffed up air head who wanted her daughter to show off, or she’s a feckless thief, or any of the unfair characterizations of someone we don’t know is just a bridge too far.
From what I’ve read here: rules, contract, California law, the fair stole the goat and had it destroyed illegally. And after all of that the fact remains, whether mom was a loon, (I don’t think so) or not the child did not deserved the emotional trauma visited upon her. If the people in charge had not been butt hurt by someone breaking the RULEZZZZ! This could have been resolved without the death of the goat, the trauma of the child, and law suits. The Shasta Fair has tarnished its own reputation if the powers above the lady who wrote the too bad so sad, your goat must die letter, are smart they will publicly fire that person and try to fix the damage she caused to their brand.
The principle is that all animals at the fair must be slaughtered. Just reading the rules (no children allowed after the sale) strongly suggests that they’ve had previous cases where children had second thoughts about an animal they cared for being slaughtered for food. I suspect the woman who wrote that letter thinks that the whole point is to desensitize children to the slaughter of food animals. It’s not really about learning how to care for livestock, it’s really about learning not to care ABOUT livestock.
Nitpick: all the animals that were in that particular auction program. It’s extremely likely that there were lots of animals shown at the fair in other classes/programs who weren’t slaughtered. In retrospect, the child in question should have entered one of those; but that’s hindsight.
I agree with you that that seems to have been the way the woman who wrote the letter was thinking. I don’t know whether that’s how that particular program was run by that particular 4H chapter, let alone how other 4H chapters do it; but it seems to me that the idea could certainly be learning how to understand the modern meat production system, partly in order to learn how to raise animals for it, but also partly to find out whether one’s likely to want to be part of it as an adult – not to desensitize, but to fully consider what many people in this society want to take part in while avoiding looking at it.
I’m not sure we shouldn’t also have programs in which people could study a piece of land about to be cleared for soybean production, and then take part in the clearing, after they’ve learned something personally about what gets destroyed in the process; not just from pictures, but from actually being physically in the pre-existent ecosystem. But of course that’s not happening right next to the homes of most people in such things as 4H programs; it’s a lot easier to move goats to the people than to move a chunk of forest, or even mixed-species pasture fields.
I’ll concede the point regarding the motivations. We don’t know what they are and it is unfair to attribute them. If anything, it seems all adults involved acted like idiots.
I stand by my opinion that the mom is the one mostly at fault here for not doing the due diligence and getting into this situation. Mom either didn’t read any of the paperwork and ask questions about the show process and what was meant by things like “terminal sale”, or she did know what it all meant and went ahead with it anyway.
Plenty of other screw-ups and stupidity, but the chain of events started with mom not paying attention to what she was signing her child up for.
As for the rest —
Mom let the goat go to auction and then stole it. Stealing is criminal so don’t be surprised if the sheriff comes-a-calling. Not sure what life-lesson that is teaching her child.
The fair could have handled this a lot better, let mom buy the goat back and then ban them from showing at the fair again if it was that big of a deal. The mom claims that she tried to back out of the auction prior to the bidding but was told that wasn’t allowed. That would have been a good point to take the goat and go home, not sure the fair would have a claim on it as it hadn’t been sold at that point.
While a warrant was issued, not sure why the evidence (Cedar) was eaten once retrieved. It would seem like locating and holding the goat until the criminal and civil questions were resolved would have been sufficient.
Fwiw, i was chatting about this in another venue, and one woman said that she entered her child into a similar program, and her child, also, got more attached to the goat than anyone had expected.
The difference is that in her case all the adults acted like adults. The woman asked to program to let them exit it, she found a place for the goat to live, and, that’s where our ended up. No one was emotionally or financially damaged. Well, i guess she was out the cost of the goat, and the fair didn’t get their cut of the auction fee, as the goat wasn’t auctioned off.
She thought the 4H folks thought less of her for backing out, but they lent her the use of a truck to re-home the goat. And she said that she felt it had been a positive experience for her daughter to learn to handle livestock and to interact with the goat, even though they backed out at the end.
I’m going to assume that the woman in this story, and her daughter, understood what “terminal auction” meant when they signed up, but didn’t expect the girl to become as attached as she did. That’s what happened to the women i spoke with, and my guess is it’s a moderately common outcome. This story made the news because the mother was ineffective in keeping the goat out of the auction, and the fair official was an asshole.
Or she didn’t expect her kid to become as emotionally attached as she did. Kids do this sort of thing and do okay with it. Some don’t, you can’t really know until it happens.
Only thing she is at fault there is her lack of time machine.
She was lied to and told that it had to go to auction.
As they never actually relinquished their claims, she didn’t steal anything. She simply kept the property under consideration. That violated the rules of the fair, but no laws.
In fact, the fair never paid them the proceeds, so they are the ones that took property that didn’t belong to them. And they did so by falsely swearing out a complaint to the police.
Yeah, they certainly could have. It seems as though they weren’t just heartless about the situation, but they actually broke laws, committed grand theft larceny, and lied to the police. The police aren’t looking much better here, as the warrant that they executed required that they bring the goat in front of the magistrate and retain it for evidence. Instead, they took it to the slaughterhouse.
The judge who signed off on the warrant showed remarkable lack of judgement, and should resign after such a blatantly corrupt act. Whether he knew or was fooled about the actual situation, I don’t know, but in either case, he has demonstrated that he is either incompetent or unsuited to the position. He considered a post on social media in support of the family to be sufficient probable cause to sign for a breach warrant. Obviously, as the goat wasn’t at that location, this was a baseless reason.
The police then went somewhere not in the warrant, and in violation of the Constitutional rights of the property owners, entered and removed property.
In this case, the mother and the daughter are the only ones that didn’t break laws, that didn’t lie and steal, that didn’t misrepresent facts, that didn’t abuse their authority.
I think that the fair organizers are the ones that are going to learn a lesson. Probably not the cops who committed grand larceny under color of law, as cops rarely face consequences for their actions. But the fair organizers, the ones who lied and swore out a false affidavit to get a warrant, they will be held both civilly and criminally liable for their actions.
And as far as the social media part, they claimed that part of the reason for their actions was because they were getting negative feedback in social media for their actions, well, now they’ve made that situation worse.
All because they wanted to teach a nine year old a lesson.
That’s what was required in the warrant, which was ignored by the police who took the goat to the slaughterhouse rather than preserving it as evidence.
I doubt it was eaten. The only person who has a right to the meat is a party to this issue now, and probably wouldn’t get much enjoyment out of it, knowing the harm it caused. He paid significantly more than market price at the auction because he believed in supporting these kids, and didn’t show the casual callousness and cruelty that most of those involved have shown.
Do the proceeds go to the exhibitors, or is the event a fundraiser, with the money to go to some named organization (possibly the fair, possibly some other group)?
Considering the price bid for the goat, a fundraiser seems a lot more likely.
I believe the meat was to be donated to a charity dinner, not to be eaten personally by the politician who bought the goat. Whether that’s what happened to it, considering the rest of this mess, I have no idea.
My impression is that the proceeds go to the owners. They bought the goat, they paid for its food and lodging. They didn’t do it as a fundraiser, I think the whole point is for the kid to make money by participating in the exercise of raising and selling the animal.
I could be wrong, but everything that has been said has indicated that to be the case.
From the lawsuit
“notice that Plaintiffs did not receive compensation for him at auction”
…
The high bid for Cedar’s meat was $902.00, far over market rate, as bidders typically
overpay for meat at such auctions because it means more money to the child exhibitor. Of that amount,
the Shasta Fair Association was only entitled to $63.14, and was to pay the remaining $838.86 to Plaintiff"
It would have belonged to the politician. If the politician chose to donate it to a charity dinner, that would be their choice, but that’s not any part of the 4-H or fair program itself.
The proceeds go to the owner of the goat, the family, less a 7% donation. So of the $902 auction price, $838.86 goes to the family and $63.14 goes as a donation. Presumably the slaughtering fees come out of the donation.
The USA today article linked above might have a little more info.
I think there is a rule that the exhibitor must be the owner, but I can’t remember what source said that.
As an aside: It’s unclear, to me at least, if the family was paid and the contract was completed. I think assumptions that the goat was stolen are premature.
Right, the key thing I take away from this is that nothing about the ownership of the goat or the nature of the contract is clear, and these issues should have been resolved by a judge in a civil suit (or better yet, between the parties negotiating like adults).
It’s hard to imagine a worse reaction than involving the police to violently seize the goat and immediately having it butchered. Maybe pressing charges and arresting the child or the parents as well?
This all happened last summer, I wonder where the goat meat is now? Did Sen. Brian Dahle receive it, or is it sitting in some freezer somewhere? Did the senator pay $900 to the fair, and did the fair pay $830 to the child? Was the Terminal Auction actually terminated as required by the contract, and if not then why was the goat killed, other than to punish the child and end the social media controversy (whoops)?
I wonder how many times this has happened before with this fair. Goats are rather personable. I imagine it’s not that unfortunately for a child to be your about selling the goat for slaughter. If the current fair official is in the habit of lying, and telling the families they aren’t allowed to drop out of the program, have they done that before? Lots of times?