Shanus-REA suit

[ls7plus]

Kudos to Dan Markel for a great, informative post. Boy, what a mess!

Jeff and I are both lawyers, with my understanding being that he's been quite successful in trying some very tough, high profile cases, and I applaud him for that, while I focus primarily on rather routinely handling some high dollar appeals in the Michigan appellate courts and US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cinncinatti. However, I've seen some real scam jobs and out and out criminal behavior in the practice of law also, present company most definitely excepted. I've posted before about studying the area of coin collecting for a period of more than 20 years, because I think that its 120-year head start as an organized hobby over ours gives a reasonably accurate preview of what ours is likely to go through (collectors thinking patterns seem remarkably similar, whatever their focus). Coins have also experienced a huge number of frauds and scammers over time. I think its just indigenous to human nature whenever big $$$ are out there.

Our hobby will overcome and survive, however, just as other fields of endeavors have, although perhaps not without suffering many more black eyes along the way.

With respect to Mark's comments on O'Keeffe, I would respectively disagree. Although I read and enjoyed "The Card," and there is no question he writes well, I think there is little question he has an agenda to push, just as many writers in various fields do, and writes with an easily discerned animus towards the hobby. That said, participating in this hobby has always been caveat emptor, and most hobbyists thoroughly understand that. If they don't, heaven help them, as the unsavory characters lurking out there certainly won't.

Best to everyone,

Larry Smith