| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Court Rules a Horse Is Not a Vehicle |
| 2004-09-23 |
| 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. 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, |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 My father-in law was a Pa Judge... the occasional weirdness seems to be tolerated or even encouraged. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-09-23 7:56:59 PM |
| #1 I actually knew someone (co-worker) who was actually convicted of a DUI in the 1980s for riding a horse while drunk. But this is California. What's odd is that I never saw him drunk at work, and he never had the smell of booze about him. So he wasn't a chronic drunk... Willie L. If I knew where he was I would tell him about this! |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-09-23 6:54:33 PM |