Coach's Corner - The Perfect Crime?

[jt39]

If you can pardon the overly lawyerly post that follows, I've offered a few off the cuff thoughts on this (not legal advice in any manner, and totally hypothetical based on what people have said in the thread):

Though this is a relatively small, non-traditional target for class action (which would make it tough to find a lawyer, I'd think), class action doesn't strike me as totally implausible here -- may make sense to define the class in relation to a particularly egregious authenticator(s) and name them as well. The # and type of items sold is easy enough to identify and plead, and you can pick and choose amongst items so as to define the most desirable class -- one which is sufficiently large, sufficiently easy to connect (e.g. signatures of certain oft-sold players), etc. Finding a lead plaintiff may not be too tough since anyone buying the stuff is already on the internet and I'm sure plenty have complained over the years. They need to have been genuinely swindled though. Find an expert who can attest that all of the autographs in question are fakes and then list them in the complaint (here again, their internet presence really helps with pleading sufficiently specific facts -- you could even list out auction #'s and include pictures of the items in question).

The real kicker would be identifying the sources of the purported memorabilia. Detective work on this can't be too tough -- where do packages to the bad authenticators come from? Do trucks pull up to/drive away from, say, this Morales guy's office that someone can follow? I'm obviously not giving any kind of advice to pursue such actions, which are undoubtedly more appropriate for governmental authorities and would require careful scrutiny from an attorney before an individual pursued them. But if you could define the class as people who purchased items that were produced by Counterfeiter Doe, certified by Joe Authenticator, and sold by Coach's Corner, you'd be setting yourself up well on some major stumbling blocks to class action certification (commonality, typicality). Not to mention setting up a nice array of causes of action -- RICO, conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud, in addition to breach of contract. The whole point of conspiracy causes of action is to prevent illegal actors from avoiding the force of the law by craftily breaking up their criminal enterprise into separate parts, then claiming they are unrelated and hiding the connections. That is exactly what this is (hypothetically). If this is actually a conspiracy, some well-thought-out, yet totally legal for a non-governmental-official investigation may well uncover the type of info needed to survive a motion to dismiss.

I would note that there is nothing stopping a truly aggrieved individual from bringing a lawsuit relating to their own item. Sure, there may not be a ton of money in it and that may make it hard to find a lawyer, but if someone is pissed enough, and/or spent enough money, it would be much easier to get a case off the ground (and, most importantly, gain access to discovery from the company) if the case was brought by an individual. Of course, you'd face a fight on the scope of discovery, but you'd have a good chance at getting at the juicy info on the connection points in the alleged scheme. May not get a lot of $$$ in the first case (unless you can win punitives), but would be doing a ton of damage to their (hypothetical) criminal enterprise -- if any nasty info gets brought to light, the whole house of cards may well come down.

Finally, someone mentioned that they only trade on "opinions," they don't actually assert that the items are legit. First, that's why you bring in the authenticator. Second, you can allege (and seek to prove) that they know the items are fake, and that they know that the authenticator knows the items are fake -- and therefore that withholding that information and passing them off as items for which an authenticator has issued an "opinion" of veracity is itself a misrepresentation. Now, fraud has heightened pleading requirements (i.e., you have to allege more specific facts in your suit ... can't just say "he lied!"). But an individual asserting breach of contract on that basis may well be able to go after this as a misrepresentation without meeting that burden. (I.e., you contracted for an item that was truly "a baseball that Joe Authenticator has opined was signed by Mickey Mantle," when in fact what you got was "a baseball that Coach's Corner knew was a fake and which it knew had been counterfeited and which it knew had been knowingly fraudulently designated as real by Joe Authenticator".)