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Apollo 11 Moon Rock Bag Belongs To Buyer, Not NASA, Judge Rules (behindtheblack.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Behind The Black: A federal judge has ruled that NASA has no right to confiscate an Apollo 11 lunar rock sample bag that had been purchased legally, even though the sale itself had been in error. CollectSPACE.com reports: "Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled in the U.S. District Court for Kansas that Nancy Carlson of Inverness, Illinois, obtained the title to the historic artifact as 'a good faith purchaser, in a sale conducted according to law.' The government had petitioned the court to reverse the sale and return the lunar sample bag to NASA. 'She is entitled to possession of the bag,' Marten wrote in his order." This court case will hopefully give some legal standing to the private owners of other artifacts or lunar samples that NASA had given away and then demanded their return, decades later. Space.com's report adds: "The zippered cloth pouch, which was labeled in bold black letters 'Lunar Sample Return,' was used on July 20, 1969, as an 'outer decontamination bag' to protect the first moon rocks retrieved from the surface of the moon as they were delivered to Earth by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Carlson purchased the bag for $995 in February 2015, at a Texas auction held on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service. The bag had been forfeited along with other artifacts found in the home of Max Ary, a former curator convicted in 2006 of stealing and selling space artifacts that belonged to the Cosmosphere space museum in Hutchinson, Kansas."
Excuse me while I lol myself to sleep
It shouldn't mean they can own something that was originally stolen.
It may have been stolen, but it wasn't stolen from NASA. NASA gave it away. It was later stolen from a museum, then recovered by the police. It wasn't claimed within the statutory limit, so the police (actually the US Marshals) sold it at auction. NASA was suing the winner of that auction. Legally, NASA has no standing. Morally, they have no right.
Why would NASA bother chasing this? To the buyer its a kind-of-cool conversation piece, but it has no real scientific or historical value.
If she paid $1000, that sounds reasonable. What were NASA's lawyers' fees?
that means that the stolen property had been recovered by the police but the legal owner (NASA) never bothered to come and pick it up.
Therefore the government (state or local) sold it at auction. It belongs to the woman.
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
My understanding is that in this case NASA didn't bother to claim the bag after it was confiscated from the thief. So after a while it was sold at auction by the police.
It was a case of NASA not bothering to claim the bag before it was sold. So the item that was bought wasn't just stolen, it was also abandoned by the original owner.
More accurately, NASA gave it away to the museum, from where it was stolen. In that light, the museum could conceivably have a claim, but NASA has no standing.
I mean, if I sell my car, and it's stolen from the new owner, can I then try to claim it back? That could be a fun scam.
-- sigs cause cancer.
As other posters note, the difference here is that the rightful owner of the stolen property was given ample chance to claim it after it was recovered - NASA did not claim it in the time period allowed for in law, so the police force that recovered it could rightfully dispose of it in any way they wish, which they did at auction. Once that claim period expired, it ceased to be stolen property and became unclaimed property - the buyer was not buying stolen goods.
It may have been stolen, but it wasn't stolen from NASA. NASA gave it away. It was later stolen from a museum, then recovered by the police.
They could have transferred ownership, but isn't that unusual? I thought most such items were formally loaners even if they're casually referred to as donated and permanently on display. There's quite clear precedent here though, if something of yours is seized and forfeited it's lost. Doesn't matter if it was a theft, lease or a loan, it doesn't matter if you never knew it happened. I remember one case from civil forfeiture, they rented a sail boat and had got caught smuggling, boat was seized and sold before the owners knew. It was accepted as fact that they ran a rental agency and had no involvement in the smuggling attempt.
Did the owners get their boat back? Nope. Did they get compensated? Nope. They can only sue the jailbirds for the loss, the boat is now legally somebody else's property. So if they don't want to have one rule for NASA and one rule for everyone else, this is how it must be. When nobody contested the seizure, it was forfeited. At that point it stopped being whoever's property it was before and became the government's legal property, free of all history. And then it was lawfully sold. Is that "fair"? No, but it's how all police auctions work.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That seems like extreme laziness on the government's part. Presumably the boat has some sort of VIN and a title could be looked up. That sort of thing shouldn't be legal if the government doesn't make a good faith effort to find the original owner.
It is more than that. Lets pretend its a car.
I donate my (rightfully owned) car to a museum.
(The car that rightfully belongs to the museum) is stolen from the museum.
(The car that rightfully belongs to the museum) is retrieved by the police.
(The car that rightfully belongs to the museum) is not claimed by the museum. It now rightfully belongs to the police.
(The car that rightfully belongs to the police) is auctioned, and purchased by a buyer.
I want my car back!
"My" car has now been rightfully owned by two other agencies and non-rightfully owned by a thief. It is fundamentally "not my car".
They could make a good-faith effort to find the owner, or they could auction it and pad yearly revenue. The choice is obvious.
This is a big reason why police organizations often oppose drug legalization. Drug crimes are the biggest source of forfeitures, so it is profitable for police to focus on them, and devote minimal resources to unprofitable crimes like, say, sexual assault.