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

theguardian.com

71–80 of 153 posts

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

#71
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…

> 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 Every contract comes with its invisible body of law attached. For purchase and sale contracts, particularly those involving livestock auctions, property law comes into play. Withholding someone else’s property is criminal. The police showed discretion in not charging t…

They offered to make the other party whole.

If they were careless and a wild animal killed the goat, theyd not of unconditionally committed a crime, theyd only need to make the other party whole.

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

#72
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's correct. And at the time they first "tried" to back out, the goat had not been sold. At that point, everybody was on notice that the goat was not for sale. No valid sale could have occurred after that first attempt. It's not that they "tried" to back out. They did back out. And the only available remedy for that was money damages, not random extraducial confiscation of property.

By the way, on top of that, California law explicitly gives minors the right to back out of major sales even after they are concluded. So in fact they couldn't even have gotten money damages.

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

#73
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.

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…

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

#74
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's correct. And at the time they first "tried" to back out, the goat had not been sold. At that point, everybody was on notice that the goat was not for sale. No valid sale could have occurred after that first attempt. It's not that they "tried" to back out. They did back out. And the only available remedy for that was money damages, not random extraducial confiscation of property. By the way, on top of that, Cal…

> No valid sale could have occurred after that first attempt

Auctions have rules. I don’t know this one’s, the complaint [1] omits much of them, but every one I’ve participated in bars backing out on the day of the auction. If you change your mind, you bid for your item.

[1] 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

#75
post #50
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If she bonded that closely to the animal they should have kept it on the property and not brought it to the 4H show. What are you talking about? They kept it on property and law enforcement agents turned up (without a warant, inserting themselves into a civil dispute) and stole their goat. This is the contentious point. What business did those law enforcement agents had to enter their private property and steal a g…

What are you talking about? Is everyone who responded completely unfamiliar with agriculture and 4H programs? The animal was bought to be auctioned, and WAS auctioned at the 4H fair. The article literally says the girl had a breakdown _at_ the auction.

> Is everyone who responded completely unfamiliar with agriculture and 4H programs?

I don't know about other people, but I'm happy to admit that I'm unfamiliar with agriculture and 4H programs.

> The article literally says the girl had a breakdown _at_ the auction.

The Sacramento Bee article linked by the Guardian article says that they expressed their wish to not sell the goat before the auction.

"Before the auction began, the family asked to back out but fair officials refused, saying fair rules prohibited that and put the goat up for auction,..."

That sounds like a civilian dispute. Did the owner/family had the right to back out of the auction at that point or did they not? How can a law enforcement agent become a judge to decide on this?

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

#76

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...

> was no contract

There absolutely was. Between the Fair and the family, when they first put the animal on auction. Between the Fair and the purchaser, when it was auctioned.

We don’t have their details. But they definitely existed.

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

#77
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many livestock auctions or 4H shows have you attended? If the answer is greater than zero, which I truly doubt, how many did not require the entrants to understand that entering your animal is putting it up for sale?

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

#78

I feel for this little girl - for losing her friend. I think if more parents would explain to kids where meat comes from most would react like Indie-Rose - another little kid[0] - who said: "I don't want to chop up animal people" And there are so many more kids realizing on their own what they are eating. They don't want to eat Peppa the pig & friends and yet we (mostly) force them to eat them. And there are so many…

You’re projecting hard.

My niece happily eats the chicken she helped raise and watched be slaughtered and butchered. I also knew where meat came from as a child and that didn’t bother me.

These grand moralistic pronouncements don’t seem true… and ignore that carrying them out would be the death of 35M cattle, 500M chickens, etc. A near total devastation of their species, who primarily exist as our food source.

Should we stop the worst abuses of industrial farming? — yes, and that’s already happening. But spare us the grandiose speeches demanding we cull food herds as a moral imperative.

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

#79
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, in life, sometimes we just don't quite think things through. You're busy, preoccupied, whatever. You don't get all the facts and just assume the best. You get to the auction and realize your daughter loves the goat a lot. You don't spend all day in an analytical mode, anticipating the worst cases, and then things happen and it's then too late to act. It's like being careless where you park your nice car and…

I don’t mean to attack you here, but I feel like it isn’t fair to paint my side of the argument as one of non empathy. I wish that the Shasta Farm Association and the dickhead that made the purchase would have said “let’s let it go”. But they didn’t, and I don’t agree that some egregious civil rights violation happened as a result. That is simply my opinion.

No, not an egregious civil rights violation, but an everyday, mundane brand of evil. Rules, contracts and law were duly followed, and empathy didn't come into the picture. Someone with power could have paused and tried to find an alternative path, but they didn't.

This reality exists in stark contrast to the one depicted in Hallmark and Disney films, but the sad part is how little effort separated this situation from an alternative outcome.

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

#80
post #75
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Is everyone who responded completely unfamiliar with agriculture and 4H programs? The animal was bought to be auctioned, and WAS auctioned at the 4H fair. The article literally says the girl had a breakdown _at_ the auction.

> Is everyone who responded completely unfamiliar with agriculture and 4H programs? I don't know about other people, but I'm happy to admit that I'm unfamiliar with agriculture and 4H programs. > The article literally says the girl had a breakdown _at_ the auction. The Sacramento Bee article linked by the Guardian article says that they expressed their wish to not sell the goat before the auction. "Before the auction…

> they expressed their wish to not sell the goat before the auction

On the day of. Most auctions don’t permit this. (Again, livestock auctions have a lot of law around them. Their orderly functioning underlies several states’ economies. Teaching this is sort of 4-H’a point.)

> can a law enforcement agent become a judge to decide on this?

They got a warrant [1]

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

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