Funny Forward of the day....

aggiezach · Sep 23, 2004

Got this from one of my professors...

Make sure you read the judge's dissent carefully!!

Court Rules a Horse Is Not a Vehicle
Thu, Sep 23, 2004 from the Associated Press

PITTSBURGH - The state Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania's drunken
driving law can't be enforced against people on horseback, a decision that
inspired the dissenting justice to wax poetic.
The court ruled Wednesday in a case against two men in Mercer County in
2002. Riders Keith Travis, 41, and Richard Noel, 49, were charged with
drunken driving along with a man driving a pickup who allegedly rear-ended
the horse Travis was riding away from a bar on a dark country road.
All three men failed field sobriety tests, police said, but a judge threw
out the charges against Noel and Travis after they argued that the word
"vehicles" in the state's drunken-driving law doesn't apply to horses.
Prosecutors said the code specifically includes people riding animals. But
the majority justices cited a similar case in Utah, where judges said such a
statute is confusing and too vague about which regulations would apply to
animals as well as vehicles.
Justice Michael Eakin, who is fond of writing rhyming opinions, summed up
the lone dissent with two stanzas mimicking the theme song of "Mister Ed" *
a 1960s TV sitcom about a talking horse:
"A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
but the Vehicle Code does not divorce
its application from, perforce,
a steed as my colleagues said.
"'It's not vague,' I'll say until I'm hoarse,
and whether a car, a truck or horse
this law applies with equal force,
and I'd reverse instead."