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Hey Cornell, is your refrigerator running?

Staff at the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine will undoubtedly be checking on their refrigerators and freezers frequently now that they have been found liable for destroying more than $212,000 worth of horse semen from a New York horse-breeding firm. In case you’re wondering: That’s comparable to four years of undergraduate tuition at the Ivy League institution.

After a week-long trial, a jury in Dutchess County, N.Y., has decided that Cornell is liable for the loss after they stored 212 units of semen from a Holsteiner horse in what the lawsuit described as a “defective cryogenic storage tank.” The samples were stored by Fox Run Farm LLC in 2004 and their loss was discovered in 2005, when Lynn Reed, the owner of the horse farm, attempted to collect her samples.

After discovering the spoiled semen, instead of watching The Switch for ideas, Cornell optimistically sent Reed a $2,045 check as compensation for the samples that the jury valued at $212,841.83. Reed opted to sue the school to get the true value of her frozen specimens. “What they destroyed was unique, valuable” and irreplaceable, Anthony J. Siano, attorney for Fox Run Farm LLC, told the Poughkeepsie Journal on Wednesday. A jury agreed.

The school has about two weeks to appeal the decision and the rest of eternity to shake the “horse sperm destroyer” moniker.

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