Langbord's Win!!!

So how will anyone know if anymore coins appear from 33 if they're from this collection or from somewhere else after the family sells them assuming they sell all 10.

 

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Good question.

 

Forfeiture means to give up your interest in property, usually as a penalty for wrong doing. If the Langbords never possessed a legally cognizable claim in the coins then there is nothing to forfeit and the application of forfeiture statutes is illogical to me. Unless I missed something in the statute, CAFRA applies to non judicial forfeitures and not to non-judicial actions that are not forfeitures. Unless I am mistaken, I thought the trial court held that the Langbords never had legal title to the coins and that was the subject of the now vacated declaratory judgment entered below.

 

OK, the Lanbords had an interest in the property because they had them in their possession. At the time the government seized them the government felt they belonged to them but no legal decision to that effect had ever been reached. Until they are proven to be stolen the Lanbords did potentially have a legally recognizable claim to them so the forfeiture law would apply. And the trial court decision came AFTER the forfeiture should have been filed and after (according to the appeals court decision) the coins should have been returned to the Lanbords. That was why the appeals court vacated the other court decision. The trial should have never taken place so in the current eyes of the law it's decision also does not exist. So in the eyes of the law there is still no legal decision that the coins were stolen and are the property of the government.

 

Yup. There's nothing in the decision that prevents the government from arguing the stolen coin bit, they just can't seize them non-judicially in the meantime.

(added) However, there's nothing preventing to Government from using the arguments they developed successfully during the case they 'won'

 

How else did they end up with them?

 

That's the argument - the mint's records are meticulous about the NUMBER of coins in inventory, but not about the specific dates. At the time you could bring your nasty old 20s to the window and exchange them for nice new ones. At least for a window of time, before the confiscation order.

 

And hence the Langbords' argument that the coins were obtained legally......

 

If a neighborhood kid steals your car, does he have a legally cognizable interest in your vehicle since it is in his custody? He is illegally exercising dominion and control over it, but he has no ownership interest. Whether the Langbords had custody of the pieces or not is not the question. If the coins were stolen, they Langbords never legally acquired a possessory/ownership interest and no forfeiture occurred, notwithstanding the fact that they held them for years. And the time of "acquisition" is what matters, not when a judicial order is entered.

When the Langbords filed a suit under CAFRA alleging a prima facie case, the burden shifted to the government to prove that the coins were stolen and that CAFRA didn't apply. A jury and judge agreed that the coins were stolen. That is what matters. I think the jury verdict was wrong and should be set aside and the appellate courts rule on the facts or remand for a new trial. This is not was done. Regardless of the fact that I agree with the result, I think the Third Circuit erred significantly here.

 

Well you got half your wish. The jury verdict is gone. However the government now knows a viable strategy to convince 6 jurors. So they file suit under something other than CAFRA and ask the court to secure the item in question so that it doesn't leave the jurisdiction.

If they want to go whole hog they can file a criminal case under 18 USC 641. the second clause of that law covers receives, conceals or retains... that law or something like it has been on the books since at least 1909...

You can go out to justice.gov and read the US Attorneys manual sections around 1642. Conversion is easy they tried to sell. The hard part is proving they knew it was stolen.

 

I think the Langbords need to explain how they had the coins all this time. I do hope they win their case.

 

You make sounds like you're a 1 or 2L.

 

Key phrase "IF the coins were stolen". I'm sorry we don't KNOW if they were stolen, and there was no legal decision at the time of the seizure that they coins had been stolen. Your initial sentence is flawed. A more accurate analogy would be a neighborhood kid is found in possession of a car. I claim the car is mine but I have no title or registration for it. Are you saying that until it can be researched and proved whether or not the car actually belongs to me the kid has no interest in the car? I say he does have an interest until it can be proven he doesn't

But filing the suit under CAFRA required a response from the government within 90 days or the coins had to be returned and the matter dropped. The government didn't respond so the appeals court says the coins should have been (and must be ) returned, there should have been no court case so there is no decision that the coins were stolen. The government couldn't have proven that they were stolen and that CAFRA didn't apply before the 90 day deadline, so they needed to file the forfeiture proceedings so they could continue holding the coins while they developed their case. But they didn't so under CAFRA they lost.

 

Who made the car? Fact, the Government. Whose name is on the car? Fact, the Government's. How many were intended to be released to private individuals? Fact, none of them. How many were intended to be melted down? Fact, all 445,500 of them.

I'd think that puts the ball in your court.

 

Wrong Eddie - at the time the coins were minted, they were ALL intended to be released. It was only after the gold order that they were melted.

 

If the coins were acquired illegally, the Langbords never acquired a cognizable legal interest in the pieces regardless of whether there was a judicial adjudication at the time or not. So it doesn't matter whether there was an adjudication. The judicial finding that the pieces did not belong to the Langbords relates back to the time the coins were unlawfully acquired. That is why I see your argument as flawed. CAFRA applies to forfeiture cases. You must have a legally recognized interest in order for you to forfeit it. Another way of looking at this is that all forfeitures involve seizures but not all seizures are forfeitures. Put yet another way, the declaratory judgment did not affect the rights of the parties per se; rather it merely declared what already was.

And if the Langbords did legally acquire the pieces, CAFRA is moot.

 

Burt, were they releasing them one at a time? That doesn't make sense.

 

It's such a small number and I suspect all will be graded by NGC or PCGS.

 

But as has been shown, it was SOP for individuals to EXCHANGE older Saints for the newer ones before the official release.

This is almost certainly how Izzy Switt and others got the 1933 DE's.

The question is: who has to prove what? Does the government have to PROVE that Switt stole the coins or does Switt/Langbord have to prove that he did NOT ?

 

Exchange before the official release. Allowed for Mint employees, priority clients, and those given tours of the mint according to Roger Burdette.