Horse rancher challenges fence law

A Blanchard horse rancher's fight over the arcane state law on fences has been rebuffed by every court he's turned to, but La Verne Koenig's beef about a century-old North Dakota law has some state lawmakers saying his complaint might have merit. A jury in May found the 59-year-old Koenig guilty of allowing livestock to run at large because authorities said he failed to maintain a legal fence on his spread near Blanchard in southeastern North Dakota. Koenig was ordered to pay $5,400 for injuries allegedly inflicted on a neighbor's horse by one of Koenig's horses. Koenig has filed a laundry list of complaints about the case, including his claim that a creek and a ditch should have qualified as a legal fence - per a state law that has been on the books for more than 100 years. While Koenig appears to have little chance in the courts, some lawmakers believe there's something wrong about a law on fences that was enacted when Theodore Roosevelt was president. "There is a whole section on this and it's all 100-year law," said state Sen. Randy Christmann, R-Hazen, himself a rancher and fence mender. "It is so dated. It talks about standards for what's an acceptable fence, and they're nothing like how we build our fences nowadays." The law lists several fences considered to be legal, including a smooth wire fence with five wires, and a barbed wire fence with three wires. Other legal fences include a 4½-foot structure of rails, timber, boards, stone walls or any combination, and all "brooks, rivers, ponds, creeks, ditches or hedges," provided they are approved by county "fence viewers."