One thing that hasn't been discussed but I wonder about is what if, when Powell was the high bidder but before he was locked out, he had put in say an $800k limit bid. My guess is that the auction software would have still recorded him as the winner than night, but what would HA have done the next morning when the dust settled? His high bid on the auction program would have been unchanged (since no one outbid him on the aggregate lot) but by his limit bid he expressed a willingness to bid higher than the sum of the individual bids. Would he have been declared the winner at one increment over the sum of the individual bids or would his limit bid have been ignored since it was never executed by the auction software? If he had done that he would have had even a stronger case to be the winner. BTW, this is just after the fact pontificating; I am not saying that Powell should have realized this at the time.
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