A California Girl has been awarded $300,000 after her pet goat, Cedar, was seized by police and later slaughtered.

The lawsuit was filed by the girl's mother, Jessica Long, and named the Shasta County Sheriff's Department and Shasta County as the defendants. She filed her lawsuit in 2023 and argued the deputies had violated her daughter’s by unlawfully taking her pet goat away from her. "Cedar was her property and she had every legal right to save his life," the lawsuit explained. "The young girl who raised Cedar lost him, and Cedar lost his life. Now (Long and her daughter) can never get him back," the lawsuit details.

The girl, who was nine years old at the time, was raising the goat for the Shasta District Fair. She was involved in a program that taught children how to care for farm animals. As part of the program, the livestock would get sold at an auction.

When the time came to sell the goat, however, Long’s daughter could not part ways with Cedar, fearful that it would get slaughtered if she gave it away at auction at the fair. Instead, Long offered to pay the cost for the goat and removed the goat from the fair so that her daughter could continue raising it. Fair representatives, however, said that Long taking the goat out of the auction violated auction rules.

As a result, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office was contacted and a search warrant was issued, with the Sheriff’s Office driving over 500 miles across Northern California to take the goat. However, the deputies had a search warrant that listed the wrong farm from which the goat was taken. In her lawsuit, Long says that the deputies wrongfully took out the search warrant, and in doing so, they wrongfully seized the goat and turned it over to their officials who would later give it to another farm. Cedar is believed to have been slaughtered after he was taken away.

Long also alleged that the fair officials turned to local law enforcement and used them as an intimidation tactic to obtain ownership of the goat. Long also questioned the legal standing of documents used to show ownership of the goat.

During the back-and-forth litigation regarding who owned the goat, a settlement was reached and U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd approved the agreement.

Vanessa Shakib, an attorney representing Long, shared, “Unfortunately, this litigation cannot bring Cedar home, but the $300,000 settlement with the County of Shasta and Shasta County Sheriff’s Office is the first step forward.”

During litigation, Shakib argued that fair and county officials engaged in “obstructionist discovery tactics,” adding, “Years later this case still has several unanswered questions.”

It is still not clear who butchered the goat, how his meat was used, and who involved authorities in the dispute. However, during the discovery process, text messages from state officials revealed that the fair wanted to keep secret what had happened to the goat.

B.J. Macfarlane, livestock manager for the Shasta Fair Assn., wrote in a text message on July 22, 2022, to Shasta Fair Chief Executive Melanie Silva, “Kathy said OK but no one needs to know about this.” Another text read, “U me and Kathy are only ones. It got killed and donated to non profit if anyone asks.” Silva responded, “We are a non profit (laughing emojis).”

The county issued a statement in which they denied any wrongdoing. “The County did nothing wrong, but we recognize the risk and cost involved in going to trial, and so we agreed to settle the case,” the statement read.

The settlement has been placed in a trust that will be awarded to the girl when she is of age.