Farmer assaulted neighbour in row over amorous bull
A FARMER has been ordered to pay his neighbour compensation after attacking him with a cowherding rod – during a row over an amorous bull.
James Lawrie, 58, punched his victim, also a farmer, in the face and beat him with the stick, breaking his thumb and smashing his teeth.
Stirling Sheriff Court heard the attack came after one of Lawrie’s Aberdeen Angus bulls had wandered into a field of cows belonging to Martin Wallace.
Lawrie and a young farmhand were using a fibreglass rod as a herding stick to ‘escort’ the bull back to his own family farm when Mr Wallace, 60, saw the commotion and confronted the pair.
A row broke out over a dividing fence between their properties, near Dunblane, Perthshire, and Lawrie attacked his neighbour with the rod, which had a brass tip, leaving him needing hospital treatment.
Mr Wallace, an engineer as well as a farmer, told the court he had gone to ‘see what was happening’ after noticing Lawrie and the farmhand ‘chasing’ the bull in his field.
He said Lawrie replied ‘ with abuse and profanities’ and, when he turned to talk to the farmhand, Lawrie struck him in the face, breaking four of his dental crowns.
Asked what had been used to strike him, Mr Wallace said: ‘I assume it was a fist but to be honest I don’t know.’
He told the court he had been ‘ stunned’ and put his hand up to defend himself.
Lawrie then struck him on the hand with the fibreglass rod ‘with considerable force’.
The court heard Mr Wallace staggered away, disorientated and with a bleeding nose.
He needed dental implant treatment for damage to the roots of four of his teeth.
The farmer also needed to have a broken knuckle on his thumb reset.
Lawrie had previously denied assaulting Mr Wallace during the row on July 20, 2018, and claimed he had acted in selfdefence. But he was found guilty of assault causing severe
‘Abuse and profanities’
injury in August, following a summary trial at Stirling Sheriff Court.
During a sentencing hearing yesterday, solicitor Virgil Crawford, defending, said a medical assessment had shown that his client would be fit f or ‘ l i ght duties’ i f he was handed a communitybased disposal.
Sheriff Wyllie Robertson placed Lawrie under social work supervision for two years and ordered him to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.
He also ordered him to pay £1,000 in compensation to Mr Wallace.
Addressing Lawrie, Sheriff Robertson said: ‘That is an alternative to custody and if you breach this order you will be liable to imprisonment.’