Friday, December 7, 2007

Power Company, Stray Voltage, Liable For Dairy Cows' Death - - Annette Zeilger Blames The Farmers

Wisconsin is the dairy state, so when the local power company's transmission wires help kill or injure your herd, the State Supreme Court will rule in your favor.

That's the good news.

The troubling, but not-so-surprising sidebar, is that newly-minted Justice Annette Ziegler wrote a dissent that suggested the dairy farmers working the family homestead were also somehow at fault.

Nice try, though at 4-3 in favor of the farmers, it was close.

I guess big business can't win everything that comes before the Supreme Court - - yet - - but Ziegler is doing her bit, and that's exactly why the WMC wanted her there.

If the WMC can get a Ziegler clone on the Court next year, the next such case might go 4-3 the other way.

Look for that majority to say that cows who live near powerlines have to take personal responsibility, walk off to another farm if they feel threatened, and basically should stop mooing about it and pull themselves up by their hoofs.

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