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Originally Posted by frankrizzo29
That’s exactly what PSA is counting on to limit their liability in this mess. By directing people to return their cards to the seller their hope is that the cards will be returned to the card doctor, thus allowing them to avoid liability altogether.
I just called PSA about 4 cards that I have that I believe were altered and they really tried to get me to send them to the seller. I did not buy these cards from PWCC so I’m sending them straight to PSA. We’ll see how good their guarantee really is.
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PSA can direct all it wants that a person return his/her doctored card to the seller but there is nothing in the Guarantee that requires a person to do so
provided the card when purchased was already graded. A person doctors a card to profit from the doctoring, which can happen only if the card is sold already with the bogus grade. If the card doctor is not the person who submits the card for grading, then typically it would be an AH (
e.g., PWCC) doing it on the card doctor's behalf. The victim in this instance would be the person who then purchases the card from the AH, and that victim would be free to invoke the Guarantee and return the card to PSA.
So, to get back to the exception in the Guarantee that prohibits the original submitter from invoking it, that exception should not have an impact upon a person who in good faith purchases a graded doctored card.
It will be interesting to see what PSA does when it receives the 4 cards you are returning to them. I am not questioning that they are altered, but what is your proof? The part of the Guarantee that could cause you the most trouble is the exception that prevents you from taking them out of the slab to better examine them. That exception obviously has a valid purpose behind its insertion, but also serves a nefarious purpose -- to prevent detailed forensic examination of the card. So you could be in a Catch 22 -- unless you have before and after pics of the card, in order to prove it is doctored you might have to take it out of the slab, but if you do so, you are prevented from invoking the Guarantee.
If the day should come when technology comes to the rescue and a new TPG forms using as it business model advanced forensic analysis to detect doctoring, at that point I can foresee a day of reckoning for PSA. PSA will of course rely on the "taking-out-of-the-slab prohibition" exception in the Guarantee to insure a doctored card is not examined by such advanced methods. People will scream how else can they
prove the card is doctored to successfully invoke the Guarantee. It would seem inevitable at that point that a person will take the card out of the slab under circumstances (
e.g., video recording) that will establish the removal was done for the sole purpose of doing a forensic examination that otherwise could not be done, and that no fraud is being perpetrated on PSA. A court, if looking to interpret the Guarantee exception as narrowly as possible, will try to find a way to rule for the victimized card owner, perhaps by ignoring the literal wording of the Guarantee and looking at the intent behind the exception.
The Guarantee also provides all cases adjudicated under it must be brought in Orange County, which is John Wayne territory. I wonder if the state court in that jurisdiction would take as sympathetic a view toward such a plaintiff than would a court in a different jurisdiction. In contrast, the federal court in that circuit is regarded as a very liberal court. The Guarantee does not require that cases brought under it be brought in state court only, so whether to file in state or federal court will be an important decision the plaintiff's lawyer will need to make.