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A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

theguardian.com

61–70 of 153 posts

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they probably had a previous agreement assuring the auction, but it wasn't the police's job to make that decision. They're the executive, not the judicative. A judge would've had to make this assertion, which clearly didn't happen as they didn't have a warrant. The officers still drove all over the state into a different jurisdiction (while using taxpayers money). They likely could've gotten the goat without ma…

> it wasn't the police's job to make that decision If my car is stolen and I see it in someone’s garage, I absolutely expect the police to do something about it. In this case, the facts about lawful ownership were straightforward.

The facts were straightforward and against your position. The girl was at all times the lawful owner of the goat. The goat was not legally sold.

Even if she had not been, there was a good faith dispute, under which circumstances destruction of the disputed property is not the sort of thing that a court would allow. Which is why police need to not play cowboy. By the way, if your car is stolen and you see it in somebody's garage, the police are NOT just going to grab it and hand it back to you. They'll impound it until things are settled.

Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4-H violated the parent’s property rights to the goat by proceeding with the auction against their will 4-H programs typically loan a goat to a family to raise for the intention of teaching livestock husbandry. The goat is never legally the family’s property. (Not sure about this case.) EDIT: It appears this program involves purchasing the goat. Suing the police is still stupid. They were enforcing a purchase and s…

Wrong. 4-H (or somebody) sold her the goat, and in fact their rules required her to maintain legal ownership of the goat. You are making statments of "fact" without checking them. Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf

[deleted]

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#63
post #37
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> am a fan of honoring contracts and sales. It's perfectly acceptable to violate a contract. It doesn't matter you're not a fan of this. As long as you follow through with the terms of violating it. > Breach of contract is not a crime or even a tort. Punitive damages are generally not an available remedy. The only remedies are to make the non-breaching party whole. The main theory behind this rule is that the law sho…

If you sell someone a car, and then go take it back, you’re not violating a contact, you’re stealing a car. If you never deliver it, maybe that’s arguable but even then it could often be considered theft.

It would be more akin to selling someone a car, then telling them you're giving them the money back instead of the vehicle.

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#64
post #6

Look, I’m an animal lover and what a nightmare for that little girl, but I don’t think that her parents did her any favors by not preparing her mentally for what was to come. The animals being sold at auction is part and parcel of the 4H experience, or many families will opt to have the animal slaughtered themselves. It sounds like they brought this goat to auction where it was sold and then tried to re-neg on the sa…

> It sounds like they brought this goat to auction where it was sold and then tried to re-neg on the sale. Wrong. You did not read the article closely, or you would not have made that assumption. Frankly you had no reason to make such an assumption even without reading it. Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf

You clearly didn't read the complaint. It states that they tried to back out at the auction, both before and after bidding had concluded, and then taking the goat and sending it to a friends farm hundreds of miles away while continuing to try to negotiate.

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#65
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goat became property of the new owner when it was sold at auction, which the family knew they were getting into. I hate defending someone who clearly was being an asshole in this situation by not having the heart to say “This little girl is clearly attached, I can simply buy another goat”, but there were no rights being violated here that I see.

Wrong. The auction was not legally conducted, there was no actual transfer of ownership, and in any case what the auction falsely represented to the buyer that it had the right to sell was some meat, not a goat. You are making "factual" assertions without bothering to check them. Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf

[deleted]

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#66
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goat became property of the new owner when it was sold at auction, which the family knew they were getting into. I hate defending someone who clearly was being an asshole in this situation by not having the heart to say “This little girl is clearly attached, I can simply buy another goat”, but there were no rights being violated here that I see.

Wrong. The auction was not legally conducted, there was no actual transfer of ownership, and in any case what the auction falsely represented to the buyer that it had the right to sell was some meat, not a goat. You are making "factual" assertions without bothering to check them. Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf

Not sure why you’re repeating this comment in multiple places, but given that you are, I’ll repeat that this is not wrong, as I pointed out to you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=32704877&goto=threads%...

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#67

So the parents failed at providing the 4-H experience. Selling the livestock is a vital part of the program. But this sounds like there was a contract that the parents were attempting to back out of…because the girl threw a tantrum. It’s ok to ask, but offering to pay the value of the goat doesn’t mean they have to accept the payment and void the contract.

There was no contract.

It "sounds" to you like there was a contract because that's what you want to believe. The article doesn't say there was a contract, and the complaint goes into considerable detail about how (a) there was no contract, (b) if there had been a contract, she would have had the right to rescind it.

Also, fuck the 4-H experience...

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#68
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police unilaterally recover stolen property all the time.

In this case, the police supposedly left their jurisdiction to seize property without a warrant. That doesn't seem normal to me.

> the police supposedly left their jurisdiction to seize property without a warrant. That doesn't seem normal to me.

Counties are creatures of states. In some states, they’re jurisdictional boundaries. In California, they’re administrative entities [1]. (Cities, on the other hand, have jurisdictional characteristics.)

[1] https://www.counties.org/general-information/county-structur...

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#69
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. The auction was not legally conducted, there was no actual transfer of ownership, and in any case what the auction falsely represented to the buyer that it had the right to sell was some meat, not a goat. You are making "factual" assertions without bothering to check them. Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf

Not sure why you’re repeating this comment in multiple places, but given that you are, I’ll repeat that this is not wrong, as I pointed out to you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=32704877&goto=threads%...

I'm repeating it because of the mind-boggling number of people making contrary assertions of "fact" based on nothing but how they would like things to be.

Re: A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it wasn't the police's job to make that decision If my car is stolen and I see it in someone’s garage, I absolutely expect the police to do something about it. In this case, the facts about lawful ownership were straightforward.

The facts were straightforward and against your position. The girl was at all times the lawful owner of the goat. The goat was not legally sold. Even if she had not been, there was a good faith dispute, under which circumstances destruction of the disputed property is not the sort of thing that a court would allow. Which is why police need to not play cowboy. By the way, if your car is stolen and you see it in somebo…

> girl was at all times the lawful owner of the goat. The goat was not legally sold.

The complaint leaves this far from settled.

> why police need to not play cowboy

They got a warrant [1].

> if your car is stolen and you see it in somebody's garage, the police are NOT just going to grab it and hand it back to you

I have recovered my phone from someone’s house with the help of police. They coöperated and in exchange I didn’t press charges. Had they not, I would have pressed, they’d have been arrested and sure, a court would have been involved. To the extent the police acted outside their authority, it was in not arresting.

[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf page 9

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