Judge Cebull?

[cowman]

Was talking to an American drilling consultant(Texan) yesterday and our conversation drifted into the mad cow/border thing. He told me that the whole thing is quite a scandal! He said Cebull owns a large ranch in Montana and is actively involved in the cattle industry!
Now what is this? Do you think there could be a wee bit of a conflict of interest there? Do you think it appropriate that a Montana rancher gets to decide the fate of Canadian cattlemen? Of course being an upright appointed judge he would never use his position to help out his pocketbook, right? Lawyers would never do anything like that, right?
If this is in fact true, or not true...I would sure like it confirmed, or denied by some of the R-CALF boys that check out this site?

[Willowcreek]

cowman- I can't confirm or deny it- I just have never heard of it- or of him involved in any ranching activity which makes me believe it is just a story...The part of the country he comes from, everyone that has 5 acres and a horse has a big Montana ranch...

Now R-CALF's lead attorney owns a large ranch- that might be where the confusion came in....

[madcow]

Copied from agriweek 09/19/05

DECEIT, DECEPTION AND DESPERATION: RCALF-USA
The sky's the limit when it comes
to milking the American court
system


The lead lawyer among the three law firms which have billed an estimated
$1.8 million to the looney R-CALF outfit is Russell Frye of Washington DC.
In all there are four lawyers working the case, all members of a whole
community of Washington lawyers who are available 24/7 to cater to such
deluded fanatics as make up R-CALF.

On Sept. 9 (09/09) Frye filed a petition with the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco for a re-hearing of the July appeal which shot down
the March 1 decision of backwoods Montana judge Richard Cebull, granting the
temporary injunction that delayed Canadian live cattle exports. The request
asks that all 11 judges of the Circuit Court hear the USDA appeal all over
again from the beginning because of the 'national importance' of the case.
The original decision was rendered on July 14 by a panel of three judges,
the usual number for cases of this nature. Re-hearings are literally
unheard-of except in rare instances when there is a constitutional issue and
Supreme Court potential. Against the well-known guidelines any action
challenging the competency of USDA to make routine regulatory decisions is
laughable.

Yet sillier are the grounds advanced. One of them is that mad cow disease
which originated in Canada has cost the U.S. "billions of dollars" in lost
exports. In fact the U.S. has no beef to export if it does not import cattle
and beef from Canada. Another is that "importation of diseased animals could
result in the spread of BSE"; everyone by now knows that mad cow disease
cannot be passed from one live animal to another, just as everyone knows
that it has never been detected in any animal younger than 30 months.
Elsewhere the brief wants the court to uphold the injunction because of
USDA's historic responsibility for preventing the entry of "communicable
diseases" when in fact BSE is not communicable. In another place the brief
contends that the appeal judges "ignored the District Court's finding that
USDA had a preconceived intention to allow Canadian imports before the facts
were developed."

The request contends that the case is important enough to deserve the
attention of the full court because many organizations filed or attempted to
file briefs in support of R-CALF at the appeal stage. If the number of
interested parties had anything to do with the conduct of legal cases the
American judicial system and history would not even resemble today's.

If there is any point in the brief that a court might take seriously, it is
a tiny technicality concerning the department's statutory obligation to
quantify any risks associated with regulatory decisions. In their appearance
before the Ninth Circuit USDA lawyers stated the risk was insignificant. The
brief argues that USDA should have explained its criteria for categorizing
the risk as such. However that is a very small hook on which to hang a major
demand upon the court. The Ninth Circuit, like all American courts, has an
unmanageable backlog of pending cases. It will have to consider the
precedent if it agrees to re-hear. A Louisiana flood of similar requests
would quickly inundate it.

R-CALF is out of gas and desperate and all it will succeed in doing is to
keep the pot simmering a while longer. Meanwhile, still waiting in the
wings, is Billings judge Cebull, who has not officially ended R-CALF's
application for a permanent injunction against all Canadian cattle and beef
shipments. A postponement declared on July 20 remains but the case is still
technically alive.

(E-mail users click here <http://www.agriweek.com/agrxa/lhg615.pdf> for the
legal brief for re-hearing - a large PDF file).

[madcow]

Try this again, the email address didn't copy first time around.
(E-mail users click here <http://www.agriweek.com/agrxa/lhg615.pdf> for the
legal brief for re-hearing - a large PDF file).

[madcow]

email address ( 3rd and final attempt to copy) www.agriweek.com/agrxa/lhg615.pfd

[cowman]

Well thank you Willowcreek for answering. Like I said it was just one guy who told me this and he wasn't in anyway involved in the cattle business and he is a Texan! These old American oil field boys are pretty Pro-Albertan up here! They fit right in!
I have always agreed with some of R-CALFs ideas. I think in the big picture COOL could be a very good thing. I think we grass roots producers should be questioning packer concentration and the competitive playing field. I think it is in our best interests to have price transparency at all levels of the food chain. And I believe we all should share the cost of food safety...instead of it all being downloaded onto the cow/calf producer!
And I can understand the frustration the US cattleman must have felt when he saw a flood of cattle, caused by government policy and currency issues, coming into his market. Both the Canadian and American governments are to blame for this problem! The American government for propping up their grain farmer...the Canadian government for failing to follow suite!
However R-CALF lost me when they started the smear campaign and the lies! Dirty tactics.
They further lost me when they started using those same smear tactics against their own product! This was what convinced me they had lost touch with reality and had become a very dangerous organization to ALL beef producers.
I wonder if the lawyers are urging them on so they can sucker the ranchers out of a few more dollars? The consensus seems to be that they won't close the border and I believe now R-CALF is not being helpful to themselves at all?
The plants are going up in Canada and the American dollar is in free fall! I suspect within a year or two we will be killing a lot of Montana calves and probably exporting them elsewhere as "product of Canada", while American plants continue to shut down?
It is just too bad R-CALF hadn't held out an olive branch to Canadian cow/calf producers instead of hitting us over the head with a club, because you sure don't have any friends up here now!

[rkaiser]

We coulnd't help them even if we wanted to cowman. Like helping a fellow sinking in the middle of a quicksand bog the size of Pigeon lake with a ten foot stick.

I could not agree more with your post cowman, Rcalf has cooked their goose, and lost any credibility they may have had.

The only hope is for a new group to rise from the ashes and lose the protectionist crap and the dangerous fairy tales. Challenge the unweilding power of the mutinational packers with common sense and common goals.

[cswilson]

Being introspective is definately not a trait our American cousins have-not real good at taking responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.