Posted By:
Corey R. ShanusTo address your last point first, I agree. PSA's motives here seem very transparent -- increase revenue through a flood of resubmissions. From the posts to date it seems unlikely they have any concern for the good of the industry.
In regard to intent, as I understand the law, in civil actions for fraud intent may be imputed. So just because PSA says they didn't know they were returning an altered card to circulation (a/k/a the stupidity defense), it won't fly. If the alteration is of such a nature that they reasonably should have detected it (e.g., rebuilt corners easily seen under black light), then I would think the necessary fraudulent intent would be imputed. Going further, let me give another analogy. Suppose a company sets up a new factory in, say, a primarily African American area with a high unemployment rate. And suppose 99% of the company's three thousand new hires are Caucasians. I'd love to hear the reaction to the company's defense to a discrimination lawsuit that "by golly, we took the best people who applied and 99% of them just happened to be Causcasian." Same too with resubmissions to PSA. I don't believe anybody can credibly argue that a significant percentage of high-grade-slabbed cards from certain issues are not altered. If PSA argues that the reason they never took out of circulation any of the thousands of such cards that were sent to it for re-submission was that they in good faith (utlizing all the necessary equipment) couldn't find a single altered one, nobody would believe them. All the more so if on top of this their stated policy is to return to circulation cards they did find to be altered (indicating that their real concern was not to incur loss from buying back altered cards). Just like in the factory example if the hiring manager headed the local chapter of the KKK; that hardly would seem to buttress his company's position that they acted without discriminatory intent.