A horse is a horse, of course, of course..

[MarvinisaLunatic]

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.

 

So now everyone has another option to get home from a bar while drunk...call a farmer and borrow their horse. I could probably do that here since there's like 2 farms out here where I live that have horses.

[kkktookmybabyaway]

That fact this took place in Mercer county doesn't surprise me one bit...

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

I remember my grandma telling a story of her dad and all her uncles coming home from some salloon, with the reigns tied to the bench seat of the wagon, drunk as skunks, the lot of them. Horses always know their way home anyway. Good call.