legal Looks like Grandma Powell lost the domain but might keep the email?

[equity78]

Ron Jackson reported:

A final hearing was held on that motion Wednesday (July 12) and I was shocked and saddened to see Heidi come back from it and have to report this on Facebook (where she is a friend): "It did not go our way...The judge approved the sale of my domain to her. Proof positive that if you have all the money in the world you can do anything to anyone and get whatever it is that your heart desires, no matter who you hurt in the process. A year process to be exact."

Heidi continued, "We may appeal if we can find pro bono representation that will take it but need to wait for the audio (from the judge's ruling) before that decision can be made. We believe the judge may have split the domain and my email up, where I would be keeping the email part of the domain and she would get the domain for website purposes but not even our attorney totally understood it. Very confusing. We will be sorting that out when the audio shows up in an estimated five or so days."

Read the full story http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2017/dailyposts/20170713.htm

 

[Name Trader]

http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2043&context=ggulrev

What counter argument should there have been?
Should we ask the Department of Education would they think? After all, they got stiffed.

Added Note:
I'm not sure Mr Weslow was involved at this juncture of proceedings but surely your issue is with the judge, not the lawyers .. or maybe the law... who really knows at this point.

Looking thru this thread to answer your counter argument question, I see @DomainVP seems to give a convincing case that the bankruptcy case is the last word on this subject. And I have said that I don't see that the "celebrity" hasn't won the domain legally. But my gut tells me there is always a right to appeal. But maybe not in bankruptcy cases. I don't know.

I think the Dept of Education was probably stiffed. Although I have no idea how the system works in the US, for them to be stiffed. But I presume they are happy to have taken it back to the "grandmother" by receiving the eventual proceeds of the sale, of the domain name. Again. Not being familiar with Bankruptcy Laws, I don't really know the procedure when a bankruptcy is never closed.

The judge or the law itself, may be the culprit here. But surely he/she listens to both sides of the argument from both sets of lawyers, before passing judgment.This is where I see a potential gain for the "celebrity" to win the domain legally, by having a better argument. Although the judge must be bound by the actual laws.

I also think it was smart of the "celebrity's" lawyers, after losing the UDRP and I don't know how they found out about the bankruptcy (maybe that's just a regular part of their job), investigating the bankruptcy, finding that it had never been closed and the domain name was never listed, and saw a potential avenue to obtain the domain via that process. I think the "celebrity's" lawyers appear to have been more proactive than the "grandmother's" lawyers and out-manouvered the case into their client's favor. Probably the "celebrity's" lawyers fees were much more than the cost of the domain.

 

[carob]

Shows how much people can care about .com. This whole thing is about getting one personal name without a hyphen - the hyphenated version was registered only in October 2016.

Seems what reopened the bankruptcy case was when new Heidi's 20k offer to the bankruptcy trustee trumped old Heidi's 10k offer. But an auction, with reserve, could be better still for the creditors.

http://domainnamewire.com/2017/02/24/things-arent-looking-good-grandma-heidi-powell/

At first, the trustee determined “It is unclear whether the domain name is an asset of the bankruptcy estate. It is unclear whether Debtors properly claimed the exemption in the domain name.”

Grandma Powell had some exemption amount and agreed to pay the difference between it and the $10,000. So the trustee moved to essentially sell the domain name back to Grandma.

Then Fitness Heidi Powell upped her offer to the bankruptcy trustee to $20,000. Now the trustee is saying that the domain name is property and should have been scheduled in the bankruptcy proceedings, even though it really seemed to have nominal value at the time.

This drags up the long-running question of “are domain names property?”.