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Wis. Stat. § 70.04

Definition of personal property

Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Adams Outdoor Advertising, Ltd. v. City of Madison (2006)

Most recently applied in Union Pac. R.R. Co. v. Wis. Dep't of Revenue (March 2019)

1973 c. 90; 1973 c. 336 s. 36; 1979 c. 89; 1983 a. 27 s. 2202 (45); 1995 a. 225; 2013 a. 20; 2015 a. 196; 2023 a. 12; 2025 a. 129.

How often courts cite this section

20012010201910
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

In chs. 70 to 79, “personal property” includes all of the following:

(1g) All goods, wares, merchandise, chattels, and effects, of any nature or description, having any real or marketable value, and not included in the term “real property,” as defined in s. 70.03.

(1r) Saw logs, timber, and lumber, either upon land or afloat; steamboats, ships, and other vessels, whether at home or abroad; ferry boats, including the franchise for running the same; ice cut and stored for use, sale, or shipment; and manufacturing machinery and equipment, as defined in s. 70.11 (27).

(2) Irrigation implements used by a farmer, including pumps, power units to drive the pumps, transmission units, sprinkler devices, and sectional piping.

(3) An off-premises advertising sign. In this subsection, “offpremises advertising sign” means a sign that does not advertise the business or activity that occurs at the site where the sign is located.

Official source: Wisconsin State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Wisconsin statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.