An appeals court recently upheld a $460,000 judgment against two Eastern Iowa cattle farmers who somehow misplaced a valuable bull named Michiyoshi and attempted to substitute him with an impostor.
The case involves the owner of the bull, American Wagyu Breeders, of Michigan, and Eric and Sarah Bailey, formerly of West Branch.
They forged an agreement in late 2012 in which the Baileys cared for the bull on their farm about 5 miles east of Iowa City in exchange for use of his semen for their Wagyu herd, according to court records.
The Japanese cattle breed is thought to produce among the most delectable cuts of beef, and Michiyoshi's 100-percent black Wagyu genetics were coveted.
But in 2016 after the bull was sent to a central Iowa business for semen collection, DNA testing revealed that he was not Michiyoshi. Instead, the DNA matched another Wagyu bull the Baileys had possessed but claimed to have sold.
Michiyoshi's whereabouts remain a mystery.
"Despite days of trial and years of litigation, we are left just as confused now as the day the original petition was filed," Judge John Sandy wrote in a Thursday Iowa Court of Appeals decision. "We only know that a full-blood black Wagyu bull named Michiyoshi disappeared into thin air."
The bull that was claimed to be Michiyoshi was actually named Hirashige, which had purportedly died after the Baileys sold him to a friend years earlier.
The Baileys gave many conflicting details about the situation, court records show, including when the bull was sold and when he died. Sarah Bailey had initially claimed Hirashige died in 2013. Later she said the death happened in 2015.
The remains of the deceased bull that had been sold to the friend were exhumed but were too decomposed to obtain a sufficient DNA sample for comparison, court records show.
"It is still unclear how the supposedly dead Hirashige was represented to be Michiyoshi for several years, and there is no trace of Michiyoshi," Sandy wrote.
American Wagyu Breeders sued the Baileys in 2019, and in 2023 a jury found them liable for breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation and ordered them to pay $460,000 for the owner's losses.
The Baileys divorced while the lawsuit was pending, and Eric Bailey died last year. Sarah Bailey and Eric Bailey’s estate appealed the jury’s decision based on a judge's exclusion of certain evidence and testimony, court records show. They also questioned the amount of damages awarded by the jury.
But the appeals court found no procedural errors that affected the outcome of the trial, and it said the award was reasonable.
The judges noted that "Michiyoshi was only as valuable as the quantity and quality of semen the bull might provide," which his owner estimated to be about $700,000.
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