Trekkie Sues Christie's for Fraudulent Props

Token_Internet_Girl passed us a link to an MSNBC article on a very disappointed Star Trek fan. Mr. Moustakis of NJ bought a poker visor he thought was worn by Data in Next Generation at a Christie's auction for some $6,000. When he brought it to a convention to have it signed, actor Brent Spiner explained that he'd already sold the well-known visor in a personal sale; like Senator Vreenak, Moustakis had been given a fake. "Christie's spokesman Rik Pike stood behind the authenticity of the auction and said the disgruntled buyer's case had no merit. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Manhattan, demands millions of dollars in punitive damages and a refund for the visor and two other items Moustakis bought at the 2006 auction."

Something tells me...

[milsoRgen]

Without knowing the details intimately, I'm sure if he would have been offered a prompt refund instead of a denial from Christie's we wouldn't be talking about here on /.

Re:Get a life

[foobsr]

Why is it so wrong for someone to be so into Star Trek that they might actually experience negative physical effects from such an ordeal?

Ask a psychiatrist, if none is available, a psychologist would be fine as well.

CC.

Re:maybe not such an expert trekkie after all?

[phoebusQ]

While I agree in spirit with your arguments, the fact is that this was a Christie's auction, and their reputation stands heavily on their authentication methods. This auction in particular could be considered "high-confidence" in regards to authenticity, as it was essentially a single-source auction between the studio and Christie's.

As a rule, when buying something from a single-source auction at a place like Christie's, you are not supposed to need to worry about authentication beyond Christie's itself.

Re:Get a life

[UbuntuDupe]

Let's not forget Christie's is a prestigious auction house. While I'm no trekkie, and kinda creeped out by them, I find it even more repulsive that an auction house with a reputation to protect would be so cavalier about the authenticity to make this mistake. How is the buyer's admiration any different from people's obsession with Princess Diana or Jackie Kennedy? How big would the damages be if Christies defrauded people over one of those items?

I also saw a comment where someone said he was supposed to "properly do his research". Sorry, places like Christie's are supposed to do their research.

Btw, the story was submitted by "Token_internet_girl". Didn't know any girls were ever into star trek, but whatever.

Re:Refund? Sure. Damages???

[Courageous]

In TFA, plaintiff's attorney claims "It's negligent misrepresentation." To me (and as far as I know, the law) negligence is not exercising the due care expected of one, given the wider standards of due care that other people or businesses take in similar situations. Supposing that plaintiff's merchandise is indeed fake, I would argue that it is surely appropriate to begin a process of discovery, to determine if Christies was negligent. One does have to wonder how they sold at auction fake merchandise, and what process they used to make sure it wasn't fake. This is something that they have every imperative to avoid.

Christies does have the opportunity to avoid the discovery process. They could settle, and probably should. Having the world find out that they auctioned off fake merchandise, however inadvertently, is damaging to their reputation per se, as is continuing press on the matter.

C//

Anyone else having trouble...

[jjohnson]

feeling any sympathy for this guy?

I mean, if Christie's really did fraudulently represent these as real props, more power to him in his lawsuit. Don't stop until you've got the auctioneer's gavel.

But, holy fuck, $24K on Star Trek memorabilia? The thousands of dollars a year I spend smoking is put to better use than this dude's cash.

Re:Get a life

[Buran]

*sigh*

The issue here isn't the specific item, the specific buyer, or the specific value. The issue is that a major auction house has sold something that wasn't what they claimed it was. This is a huge problem for them as the press they are now getting due to the high profile of the item sold (almost everyone has at least heard of Star Trek) is doing damage to their reputation. If Christie's sold a fake to this guy, how do you know that that multimillion-dollar painting you had your eye on in the next Christie's art auction isn't a fake too? So you don't buy it from them, and neither does anyone else due to the bad press, and Sotheby's gets the future business instead ...

And who are you to make fun of other peoples' hobbies? Don't watch Star Trek if you don't like it, but slandering other people is yet another example of people who have really big Internet high horses and makes you look foolish. One man's piece of junk is another's treasure.

Re:Refund? Sure. Damages???

[TooMuchToDo]

If you don't institute punitive damages (in essence, "punishment") when a company deliberately takes action to defraud someone, they could just built the cost of settling/going to court into their cost of doing business, as they have built their electric bill and employee costs into their prices.

And that is definitely something you don't want companies doing.

Re:Get a life

[UnknowingFool]

Suing for millions is a little over the top, his suit has some merit if his allegations are correct. Did the auction house actually say that the items he won were worn and used by the cast and crew? I say he is at least entitled to return the items for the money. It doesn't matter that he's a trekkie. Suppose he bought the tuxedo worn by Sean Connery in Dr. No only to find out it was never worn by Sean Connery, would his suit have more merit then?

Re:Get a life

[lluBdeR]

Way to completely ignore most of TFA. Just to help you get your head around it: (from TFA)

According to the lawsuit, Spiner recognized the visor as the one that had been sold by Christie's and told Moustakis that it wasn't the real deal. The actual visor had been sold by the actor himself some time ago.

Translation: Brent Spiner had the real one. Brent Spiner sold the real one. According to the transitive property, the buyer got ripped off.

Christie's spokesman Rik Pike stood behind the authenticity of the auction and said the disgruntled buyer's case had no merit.

Translation: What does Brent Spiner know, trust me, you bought the real one from us. (As an aside, does anyone think they deliberately chose this spokesman for his surname?)

[snip] after he brought it to a convention in August to have it autographed by the actor who played Data, Brent Spiner.

Translation: I bought something they claimed was X, turns out it's not, and I was informed of this standing in a line with an assload of people around me.

When you remove the Star Trek slant, it's a case of Person X selling something to Person Y claiming it's Object A when in actuality it's Object B. If you see nothing wrong with this, I have a Ming Vase I'd like to sell you for the bargain basement price of $50,000,000. I just have to go to the dollar store and pick it up.

And from your post:

Get a life! Real or not, I guarantee it won't have any mystical or special powers. It won't make your brain compute on the level of Data's. It won't make you a member of Star Fleet.

Who says he's looking for those things? Did you ever think maybe he wanted to own a small piece of a fond childhood memory? Even if he wants it to wear it in the bathroom and relive the moment when Data proved to Tasha Yar he was fully functional, it doesn't change the fact they sold him something that's not what they claimed it was.

It isn't an "investment".

Wrong again. I'd say it's an investment, just not one that returns monetarily. Believe it or not, there are many things like that in the world. Are you going to put off having children until you can get a guaranteed ROI?

Re:maybe not such an expert trekkie after all?

[NeverVotedBush]

I found a web site where someone posted they were interested in the same item until the Chrisitie's auctioneer noted that it was a spare visor and never worn. Here is the web site: http://www.originalprop.com/blog/ [originalprop.com] Relevant section quoted in another post below. At any rate, it would appear, if this other post is true, that Chrisitie's accurately represented the item and Moustakis is paying the price for not paying attention.

Re:Refund? Sure. Damages???

[Rob the Bold]

If it's fake, he should get his money back, but damages?

That gives me an idea for "Step 2" . . .

1. Sell N pairs fake Star Trek underpants for U dollars each.

2. Get caught M times, refund M*U dollars.

3. (N-M)*U dollars Profit!!!

Re:Get a life

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Didn't know any girls were ever into star trek, but whatever.

You have got to be kidding.

As Rob pointed out

[Moraelin]

As Rob pointed out, if you don't slap them _somehow_, then it's actually profitable to run a scam. At 6000 a pop, if you sell 1000 fakes and even as high as 80% of those realize it's a scam (though it probably will be a lot less), you've still made over a million profit off the remaining 20%.

I'm sure a _lot_ of people would consider a life of crime, if the only punishment were, "if you get caught, you must give it back."

I mean, seriously, then what would be the deterrent to, say, stealing cars? If you get caught you give the car back, if not, you fence the parts. It's guaranteed profit.

There has to be _some_ punishment above and beyond giving back what you stole, or there is no deterrent.

And if you want to say, "that's not equivalent", yes, in a sense it is. If I steal your wallet (or empty your account via ID theft), get caught, and give you your wallet and your money back, what more can you want from me? You got your money back, didn't you? All's settled and fair, and I can go back on the street, right?

Well, chances are you'd want _some_ kind of punishment to both punish and deter further crime. You wouldn't want me back on the street looking for another wallet to swipe, with essentially nothing lost except a day's work.

Now for crimes like above, ok, we have jails. But for companies we can't throw the whole company in jail, and jailing the directors is stuff we keep for more serious stuff. So slapping them with a fine is thought to be an acceptable substitute. The idea is to slap them hard enough that repeating the offense doesn't even remotely look profitable. That's all.

Now the US system does look funny seen from Europe, and, I gather, seen from the USA too. It's easy to see it as "OMG, some greedy guy's trying to get rich off Christie." And it could even be the case. But, really, it's just one of the possible ways to deter companies from doing antisocial stuff. Whether it's a bunch of guys wanting big money (in punitive damages or as a settlement) or a government agency doing the same, well, the end effect is the same: the company is slapped hard enough for doing bad stuff.

In Europe we have government agencies looking out for us, and dishing out huge fines. In the USA, I gather, you couldn't trust the government as far as you could throw them, and the whole system is geared towards a more personal "lawyers at ten paces at high noon" approach. End effect, nevertheless, the company gets slapped. We could bitch about details, like that that causes lawyers in the USA to breed like rabbits, but in the end it's one way to keep companies in line. Can't see anything wrong with that underlying idea.

Props are SELDOM unique

[Reziac]

Here is what most people don't understand about this:

Most film/TV props are NOT unique. Even for a single use, usually 5 or 6 copies are made, mainly to ensure that there is no delay in the event of breakage. (Extra Prop == $$$$, Delay == $$$$$$$)

So the filmshoot or series ends and the props wind up scattered to the winds... some go into the prop houses' cavernous closets; some get lifted by cast or crew; some are thrown in the trash and salvaged by random persons. And people soon forget that other copies exist, or in the case of folks not in the biz, never knew that in the first place.

Eventually, one or more of these MULTIPLE COPIES makes its way to the collectibles market. Since extra copies exist, situations like this one sometimes arise (this isn't the first I've heard about; indeed, it's not the first reported here on slashdot), where everyone swears they alone have THE ONE TRUE PROP.

So... chances are that BOTH are genuine; that is, were made for the show. Chances are also good that only one was ever worn by Brent Spiner, and he may have never seen or known of others.

The collectibles dealer usually has no way to know how many copies of a given prop exist; all they have is a general provenance, such as that it was known to be a discard from a given production.

Re:LIS, Props are not necessarily the ONLY copy

[Buran]

I had no reason to doubt the actor's story as the show ended production some years ago (after a seven-year run which was pretty impressive). Some productions do allow actors to have some props when they won't be needed anymore, while selling others at auction. I think your middle paragraph is most likely, but the auction house should have clearly disclosed that the prop was a backup in the auction catalog. Still authentic but not the one that was used in front of the camera, and it sounds from the story like the auction catalog indicated that the prop sold was the one used on stage.

Re:Refund? Sure. Damages???

[Anonymous Coward]

Spiner told him when they met was "I told them not to sell" the visor because it was fake.

Um, ya'll are aware that there are many copies of the props, aren't you? It's not like they only make one and hope it never breaks. it's certainly possible that Spiner had one copy, and Christie's had another.

Re:Refund? Sure. Damages???

[greg1104]

This guy was in a line with (at best) 10 people in earshot of what was said, not quite worth what he's suing for if the merit is based entirely on the buyer being 'humiliated'.

The guy has enough of an obsession that he spent $24,000 on mostly Data props, and Brent Spiner told him he was ripped off. I doubt his feelings of humiliation are based on who else was in the line.

Re:Get a life

[Artifakt]

Or suppose he bought a pair of diamond cuff-links that were never worn by anyone in any movie or TV show, but they turned out to have half the karat weight described (One little each slipped into the text...)? Or they were Zircons instead? Or they were described as high clarity yellow, and were in fact dirty brown? Or they were described as cruelty free Canadian diamonds and they turned out to come from De Beers #4 Namibian mine? If frauds in general don't justify a lawsuit, then how about it Slashdotters, just which frauds would you let slide?

Re:As Rob pointed out

[servognome]

In Europe we have government agencies looking out for us, and dishing out huge fines. In the USA, I gather, you couldn't trust the government as far as you could throw them, and the whole system is geared towards a more personal "lawyers at ten paces at high noon" approach.

The US government does indeed dish out substantial fines when a company violates the public trust. The difference is that in a civil suit no crime necessarily needs to have been commited, for the government to dish out fines the law must be broken.
For example, the famed McDonald's coffee case. There was no real crime committed so no government fines, however, it was determined that the company knew about the risk of having the coffee served at higher temperature so it could be kept out longer (less waste = more profit); so as punishment they were forced to pay punitive damages to discourage such behavior.