A court in Nanjing, China, has ruled that a man must compensate a local chicken farmer for hundreds of chickens allegedly killed by the man’s four-year-old son.  The man was making a delivery to the farm when his son, who had gone with him, probably now for the last time, was scared by a barking dog.  The dog scared the boy, the boy began screaming, the screaming scared the chickens, 443 chickens trampled each other to death in fear, and thousands of future law students are now stuck with yet another freaky causation hypothetical.

The Nanjing court found that the boy’s screaming was the "only unexpected abnormal sound" that could have caused the chicken stampede, and ordered his father to pay 1,800 yuan, about $230.  Apparently a chicken’s life is worth no more than fifty-two cents on the mean streets of Nanjing’s chicken farms.

Link: Yahoo! News