Open letter to STAT and Christopher Morales

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Posted By: <b>Corey R. Shanus</b><p>This all seems a little too cozy to me -- the notion that Coaches Corner can shield themselves from criminal or civil actions by saying they are relying on LOAs from an authentication service. Certainly from the civil perspective, it seems to me that if they have marquee items that are so rare that as a practical matter they never come up for sale (outside CC auctions) routinely selling for five to ten cents on the dollar, that they are being put on notice that the market doesn't believe the signatures are genuine, thereby imposing a duty on CC to get a second opinion from a reputable authority. If they do not or if they do and the opinion comes in that the signatures are bogus, and CC sells then anyway then I would think they would be very vulnerable to an action for fraud. Yes they will play the stupidity defense -- "how were we to know, we only relied on the LOA" -- but I think the law would impute fraudulent intent under the reasonable person standard. A criminal action would be more difficult because here the stupidity defense can come into play, but even with that I think it possible they might have a hard time persuading a trier of fact that they are really that stupid.