A Sale of a Kid in California
CEDAR COME HOME: The Story of a Girl and Her Goat
Jessica’s story is sadly familiar to anyone raised on a family farm, to whom such events are a sort of rite of passage. Farm children must be taught not to treat livestock as pets but as commodities with whom relationships are best left at arms’ length. Jessica bottle-fed the baby goat and the two soon bonded closely. She named the goat “Cedar,” unwittingly violating the corollary to the first rule that farm kids must learn: you never name anything you are going to eat or sell. Unaware of Cedar’s impending doom, Jessica took to leading him around the farm on a leash just as she would a pet dog.
When Cedar reached marketable size and the time for the fair approached, Jessica learned the grim truth. She was horrified and when she protested, she and her mother told the Fair officials that they wanted to rescind the sale. For some reason, the Fair officials refused her request. Cedar was duly auctioned off to a California politician. But when he learned of Jessica’s protest, he quickly (and wisely) waived his claim to the goat meat. Jessica’s mother offered to compensate the Fair officials for the lost commission on the sale, But they remained adamant, refusing her offer and refusing to return Cedar. Instead they made arrangements for him to be slaughtered, with the meat going to someone other than the buyer.
After negotiations for Cedar’s release failed and before Cedar could be transferred to the slaughterhouse, Jessica and her mom removed Cedar from a holding pen with the other doomed stock and transported him to a farm several hundred miles away in another county.
Upon learning this, Fair officials apparently swore out a criminal complaint charging Jessica and her mother with grand theft under California law! The Sheriff of Shasta County served a warrant of some sort, seized Cedar, and delivered him to “unidentified” persons, presumably the slaughterhouse. His edible remains were then sold or given to persons unknown. The family’s best guess was that Cedar was served up at a barbeque at a Future Farmers of America cookout. (Much might be said about the cultural differences between the 4-H Club and the FFA but it is likely that Charlotte’s Web is not on the reading list of either organization.)
When she finally learned of Cedar’s fate, Jessica was devastated. She and her mother have filed a § 1983 action against the Sheriff and are contemplating a lawsuit against the Fair. One imagines that a complaint against the Fair officials will include claims for conversion, filing a false police report, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The claim for conversion would be based on Jessica’s ownership of Cedar. Even if the auction had temporarily transferred Jessica’s title to the buyer, as a minor she retained the absolute power to disaffirm the sale, even after it had been fully performed on both sides. Halbman v Lembke, 298 N.W.2d 562 (1989) (Holding that a disaffirming minor must restore the consideration received if possible.). Upon her disaffirmance of the sales contract, title to Cedar would have reverted to her. So when she rescued Cedar, she was merely retaking her own property. Conversely, when the Fair officials forcibly seized and destroyed Cedar, they were converting Jessica’s property.
The English infancy rule had little relevance to the life of young people in rural America, where young children assumed major responsibility and a 14-year-old was considered to be an adult for most practical purposes. In today’s agricultural communities it is likely that the infancy rule is largely ignored: any rule that makes all sales from a minor voidable would be anomalous in a farm community where 4-H club and FFA members of high school age regularly sell their livestock and crops in market transactions. It would be shocking to suggest that all such sales can be avoided until the sellers reached the age of 18. Teenagers in the 4-H Club and FFA are instead taught to participate in the grown-up world in which they are expected to keep the promises they make to the adults who do business with them. The norms of the agricultural community of Shasta County have more relevance to Jessica’s life than Section 14 of the Restatement.
Interestingly, the unwritten norms of the farmers and ranchers of Shasta County were the subject of the seminal empirical study that helped launch the Law and Society movement. Robert C. Ellickson, Of Coase and Cattle: Dispute Resolution Among Neighbors in Shasta County, 38 Stan. L. Rev. 623 (1986). Ellickson showed that in Shasta County, community norms rather than legal rules about cattle trespass or economic bargaining were used to resolve disputes over cattle trespass. One might imagine that contemporary Shasta County community norms will also figure largely in how Jessica’s claims are received by her neighboring farmers.
As an outsider, however, one would hope that those norms do not include the filing of criminal charges against an 8-year-old 4-H club member who just wanted her goat back. The case illustrates the uncomfortable coexistence of the criminal and civil law when parties seek to use self-help to gain possession of property that they believe they own. It also raises the dangerous prospect of a disappointed buyer in a sales contract using the criminal law rather than an action of replevin to achieve specific performance of a contract. As the reader may recall, Sherwood v Walker was a claim of replevin by the buyer seeking possession of Rose 2d of Aberlone whom the seller had not delivered. Could Sherwood have sent the Sheriff to seize Rose on the basis of a criminal complaint rather than a civil complaint for replevin?
One thing is clear: When ownership is disputed, as it was here, a sheriff is not competent to resolve the question and should remit the parties to their judicial remedies. Jessica’s 1983 action may drive that point home.