Someone described it as a textbook case in an area of law called equitable remedies.

After reading through the evidence and sitting in on a trial that played out this week in provincial court, the question that came to my mind was, "What's the matter with people?"

Judy Moss of Torbay runs a small farm which is currently home to seven miniature ponies, one miniature donkey and two horses. Flash, an 11-year-old gelding, was once part of this menagerie but no longer is.

Judy Moss still keeps a menagerie of animals at her small farm in Torbay. (CBC)

Some years ago, Moss was involved in a car accident and found herself unable to give Flash the kind care she felt he deserved. A friend named Jeff Hearn offered to take him in. No money exchanged hands, but clearly a lot of confusion did.

Moss insists Hearn understood that she would remain Flash's legal owner, and that the animal would be returned to her should Hearn tire of it. "Imagine my shock," she said in a written statement, "when on the 18th of September (last year), I found out that my horse, Flash, was taken off a meat truck by Mr. Joe Tapper."

Moss wants the horse back. Tapper, who lives just a few miles down the road from her, wants to keep it. Both claim to be the legal owner.

Moss says she didn't even want Flash back at first. She just wanted to be sure he was properly taken care of.

Tapper gave the gelding to his daughter Sara, a 24-year-old student at the College of the North Atlantic.

Dispute over horse's care heated up

Flash is not an easy horse. By all accounts there's good chemistry between him and Sara, and Moss accepts that. But she had concerns right from the start about how the animal was being housed and fed.

Please don't contact me, stay away from me, stay away from my horse, and don't come near my property or I will call the cops on you for harassing me. - Sara Tapper, in an email sent to Judy Moss

Moss says the fence around the barn is in bad shape, and she worries Flash might escape and cause an accident.

She claims Sara Tapper has been training and riding him with one of his shoes missing.

She's been bringing him hay because she doesn't think the hay the Tappers are giving him is fresh enough.

Right from the start she also suggested an arrangement of co-ownership which would see Flash back at her place but give Sara complete access.

As far as the Tappers were concerned, Moss was coming on far too strong. She spooked them.

Initially Sara Tapper liked the idea of co-ownership, but she quickly started having second thoughts. "She [Moss] was just a little too much for me to handle," she testified in court. "I didn't think I could get into co-ownership with a person of that nature."

There was an exchange of e-mails between the two in which Moss kept raising concerns and pushing the idea of co-ownership. The exchange ended with Sara Tapper telling Moss, "please don't contact me, stay away from me, stay away from my horse, and don't come near my property or I will call the cops on you for harassing me."

Moss wrote back informing the Tappers she was taking them to small claims court unless they returned Flash.

They didn't.

Stale bread and potato chips

Jeff Hearn never testified. He didn't have to. Everybody agreed he had no business giving Flash away in the first place. He never explained what made him do it, though he did apologize in a letter to Moss' lawyer for starting the whole mess.

Hearn had Flash for three years, then passed him on to Jenelle Halliday of Portugal Cove. Halliday had him for one month and passed him on to Charlie Dawe of Manuels. Dawe had him for another month before giving him to Tapper.

Dawe and Tapper know each other. They both keep animals. Tapper feeds his with, among other things, stale bread and potato chips. Dawe has a meat truck. Quite regularly the two swap meat and feed. The question is, did they swap Flash in the same manner?

Moss claims Tapper told her early on that he got Flash for nothing.

There's no bill of sale, but Tapper later stated in writing that he gave Dawe 100 bags of stale bread and 10 boxes of potato chips.

Both Tapper and Dawe admit that the actual amount of bread and chips exchanged on the day of transaction was considerably less.

Both insist they had no way of knowing that Moss was still Flash's legal owner.

Case now before a judge

All of this has been dumped into the lap of Judge Lois Skanes who must now decide who's the legitimate owner.

Unlike Solomon, she can't threaten to cut Flash in half. The law insists on all or nothing.

If Skanes determines that Tapper and Dawe struck a deal in good faith, Flash stays with the Tappers. If she doesn't buy their story, the gelding returns to Moss.

The question of what's ultimately in Flash's best interest is neither here nor there, nor is all the human drama around it.

At the heart of the matter, like the unblinking eye inside a storm, lies the legal principle of the "bona fide purchaser for value without notice to the lawful owner."

Judge Skanes promised to have a decision in about a month.