Judge Defends Cheese's Right To Smell Terrible

A German court has finally confirmed a time-held truth: Cheese stinks, and there's no amount of protest that can change it.

A neighborly conflict over a cheese shop ended up going to court in the Bavarian village of Bad Heilbrunn. Here's the deal: Manuela Kragler lives above the Tölzer Kasladen cheese chop, which she maintains emits an utterly inescapable stink. The fumes, Kragler alleges, seep through her windows, up her stairs, even through her electrical sockets. So, upping the stakes in a sitcom-esque move, Kragler drew signs with squiggly lines under a nose and posted them in her windows and outside the shop. For those of you who did not attend kindergarten, this signage translates roughly to, "This stinks." "I decided to communicate in a nonverbal way that it stinks for those of us who live in the building," Kragler said.

The shop's owner, Wolfgang Helmann, said these signs were damaging his business. The court agreed. While Kragler can no longer post her "warning signs" about the shop's smell, a judge ruled, she does retain her God-given right to "claim that she considers the smell to be stinky."

The irony is that Kragler totally screwed herself over with these signs. Helmann has actually started looking for a new shop location, but since this story's gotten so much publicity, no one wants to rent to Tölzer Kasladen and its omnipresent funk! Incredible.

The moral? Cheese always wins.