By the time Jessica Long learned where her 9-year-old daughter’s beloved pet goat was, it was too late to save him.
Sheriff’s deputies had seized the goat, named Cedar, in 2022 while he was staying at a Northern California farm. They delivered him to Shasta County fair officials, who claimed that the county owned the goat, court documents say.
Cedar was later slaughtered, according to the documents, and the family sued county officials.
Now, Shasta County and its sheriff’s office will pay $300,000 to Long’s family as part of a settlement agreement. The deal, approved by a U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California judge Friday, is “the first step of the Long family moving forward,” said Vanessa Shakib, the family’s attorney.
“We can’t get justice here because Cedar can never come home,” Shakib, co-founder of the nonprofit Advancing Law for Animals, which specializes in animal law, told The Washington Post. “But what’s important is that we make sure that this never happens again to another family and that government officials understand that animals are not property. They are family members.”
Christopher Pisano, an attorney representing Shasta County and its sheriff’s office, said Cedar’s theft was reported to law enforcement before two deputies retrieved him.
“They did nothing other than enforce the law,” said Pisano, who added that his clients agreed to a settlement because they didn’t want to go to trial. He said he didn’t know who contacted law enforcement or what happened after the seizure.
Long bought a white-and-brown Boer goat for her daughter, identified as E.L. in court documents, in April 2022. The girl named him Cedar, and she fed and walked him for nearly three months “as a family pet,” according to the Longs’ 2022 complaint.
In June 2022, Long and her daughter exhibited Cedar for potential buyers at the Shasta District Fair’s junior livestock auction in Anderson, California, according to the lawsuit. On the auction’s final day, the girl decided that she could not bear to lose Cedar. But fair representatives said withdrawing was prohibited, the lawsuit alleges.
Cedar, who was about 7 months old, was auctioned off for $902. Fearing the goat would be slaughtered for his meat, Long’s daughter cried and refused to leave the animal to fair officials, the lawsuit says.
Long took her daughter and Cedar home, telling fair representatives that she would pay for any financial losses her decision caused, according to the lawsuit. Worried her Shasta County neighbors would be upset, Long took Cedar to a farm in Sonoma County, California, more than 200 miles away, where she thought Cedar would be safe, according to the lawsuit.
Later that June, a livestock manager at the fair called Long and demanded she return Cedar, according to the lawsuit. The next day, Long sent a letter to the fair that said that three of her daughter’s grandparents had died within the past year and that she “couldn’t bear the thought” of her also losing Cedar, the lawsuit says.
Melanie Silva, chief executive of the district fair, told Long in response that “making an exception for you will only teach (our) youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants,” according to an email provided to The Post by Long’s attorneys.
The next month, a sheriff’s detective applied for a warrant to search a Napa County farm that had posted a plea on Instagram to spare Cedar’s life, after his boss asked him to investigate, according to court documents. A magistrate approved the warrant, the lawsuit says.
Two sheriff’s deputies drove to the farm, about 150 miles south, but Cedar wasn’t there, the lawsuit says. They continued on to another farm, in Petaluma, California, and found Cedar, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit accused the deputies of not having a warrant to search the property, but Pisano told The Post that they didn’t need one because an employee at the farm handed over Cedar.
Long and her family were out of town at the time, and when she texted the Petaluma farm’s owner later that month, she learned that Cedar had been confiscated, according to court documents.
Cedar was slaughtered near the end of July 2022, court documents allege. Long filed a lawsuit against sheriff’s office employees the next month, alleging that they violated her and her daughter’s right to due process and their right against unreasonable search and seizure.
In March 2023, Long added more defendants, including Shasta County and the Shasta District Fair & Event Center, which Long said retrieved Cedar after sheriff’s deputies seized him.
Long’s case against the Shasta District Fair & Event Center is ongoing. The California attorney general’s office, which is representing the fair, referred interview requests to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which oversees the fair. The state agency did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
Shakib said she and Long’s family still have questions about Cedar’s final days, such as who asked law enforcement to seize him, who killed him and where his remains are.
“This was a terrifying and devastating event that weighs on the family even now,” she said.