This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

The United States and Canada share the longest international border in the world, and ever since Canada got the keys of the place in

1867, we have been pretty peaceful and genial neighbors to each other.

The previous landlord, Great Britain, well the US had a bit more of a spotting relationship with them.

We invaded them, they burned down our house, it was a whole thing.

But even though the border with Canada is now pretty tame, when two countries touch

each other over a stretch of 5,500 miles, it can result in some surprisingly

weird disputes, misunderstandings, geographical quirks, and some really good stories. And we have a few of them for you today.

Here to tell us the first one is producer Vivian Lay. Hey biv, Roman. So what do you have

for us? Okay so the border between the US and Canada

is a very special, very weird place.

But there was a legal case from the early 2000s

that showed this really odd problem

with the boundary in the West between

Canada and Washington State specifically. This is the first time I'd never heard of

this problem. This is Richard Sanders he was a Washington State Supreme Court justice from 1995 to 2011.

And Justice Sanders has also been practicing law for over 50 years.

Old lawyers never die, they just lose their appeal, right?

So I wanted to talk to him about this case that made it all the way up to the state Supreme

Court in 2001 called State versus Norman.

Well, when I first read the facts of the case, I thought it was some sort of a joke, and I laughed

my head off.

...