The Moral of the Story

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Melissa and Bert both told me they had only ever spoken to each other one time in their lives. To her, the moral of the story was simple. You know, be neighborly. If you have a neighbor and you know who they are,. maybe try talking to them before you jump to litigation.

Back in 2005, Burt Banks inherited a plot of old family land in Delaware. But when it came time to sell it, he ran into a problem: his neighbor had a goat pen, and about half of it crossed over onto his property.

Burt asked the goats' owner to move the pen, but when neighborly persuasion failed to get the job done, he changed his strategy. He sued her. And that is when things got complicated.

Protecting private property is one of the fundamental jobs of the American legal system. If you hold a deed saying you own a plot of land, it's your land. End of story. Right?

But, as Burt would soon learn, the law can get really complicated when it comes to determining who actually owns something. And when goats are involved ... anything can happen.

This episode was produced by Willa Rubin and Dylan Sloan and edited by Molly Messick. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Katherine Silva engineered this episode. Jess Jiang is Planet Money's acting executive producer.

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Music: "Fruit Salad," "Keep With It" and "Purple Sun."

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