[meteorite-list] Open Court

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:46:02 -0800
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=dJ45GnD-k3WWa6qq2HVjCC5bfac+bRChkTwMf_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hello Richard, All,

While the article may have been vague, and I understand that
interviews can be very misleading, the basics of what was laid out on
paper seemed apparent, and were confirmed by Steve's statements.
These were namely that the profits were to be divided in a 25/75%
fashion, with the larger portion going to the meteorite hunters, and
secondly, it was apparent was that after a significant period of time
following the meteorites' excavation and removal that there was/is
little prospect of profit for either party given what we currently
know of sales and the prospective market.

Which isn't to say that the situation won't change, and I'm not
accusing Steve of anything here, but it seems that returning 25% of
the finds to the landowners would solve the issue of any moral rights
or wrongs committed; a mistake is a mistake, and returning 25% would
be fair if no profit is being generated. At least then they would
have 25% of what was recovered, which is, in theory, proportional to
25% of the profit. Granted, there are costs associated with recovery
and sample preparation, but since the responsibility for selling the
meteorites would be placed with the landowners in this hypothetical
scenario, and that takes time and effort as well, I would consider it
to be a relatively fair compromise.

I don't think that anyone here has deemed Steve guilty of anything
except not delivering promised profits due to an unfriendly selling
environment (not really his fault). The trouble is that it *appears*
as though the farmers were promised big money for the meteorites found
on their land, the meteorites were taken, and they're not seeing any
money. That would be a mistake, but in that case, the worst thing we
could accuse anyone of is of being overly optimistic -- hardly a
crime.

I've posed my suggestion for what could be done to solve the issue.
It wouldn't really cost Steve anything except material that he (if we
are to believe his video testimonial) can't sell.

- It seems like a good way to make the farmers believe they weren't
treated unfairly, even if they were given poor estimations of
projected profits. It wouldn't even cut into Steve's cut, since he
would still have 3/4 of the material to sell!

Sounds like win-win to me...and I believe that the worst thing I may
have just accused him of was that he may have been over-optimistic
about sale prices.

Guilty or not guilty, I daresay we've all done that before. The
trouble is that when most dealers make a poor investment, they merely
take a loss, and they're not in a situation where they're
contractually obligated to supply shareholders with percentages of the
money made, etc.

Part of the problem here may well be a lack of documentation; if the
farmers were promised a percentage of the "profits," then depending on
the expenses allowed to be counted against gross, the landowners may
never see any money because the "expenses" could outweigh the total
money garnered from selling the finds.
This would be especially likely if Steve & Co. included a clause in
the contract that suggested that they be compensated for an hourly
rate out of the total gross -- an hourly wage that did not count as
"profit," but rather as a recovery cost. It would likely come to
quite a substantial sum. Regardless, the farmers should have been
provided with detailed expense reports and accounts of what had been
sold, so that they could watch as the expenses as yet unaccounted for
were covered, and could thus judge when they might see profits in the
future. If this happened, they probably wouldn't be complaining.

What I see in the video is a man who was promised a profit percentage
for "extremely valuable" meteorites taken from his land, who was not
provided with enough information to know that he wasn't being, for
lack of a better word, robbed.

As I said before: knowing Steve, I wouldn't accuse him of anything
more than *possibly* being over-optimistic with regards to sale
prices. But there's clearly a miscommunication of some sort going on
- or else there wouldn't be a farmer complaining about being cheated
on the news.

Regards,
Jason

Jason Utas
University of California, Berkeley 2012
College of Letters and Science
Psychology, Geology



On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Richard Kowalski <damoclid at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ok, Judge Judy just ended, Judge Alex is on now, but I'll take a minute to post.
>
> There are so many interesting threads on this list and one extremely boring one filled with nothing but gossip and opinions. Well like the other thing that everyone else has, I have an opinion too.
>
> I see one angry framer. OK
> I see Steve's response. OK
>
> Who do I believe?
>
> I haven't seen the contract.
> I haven't seen a transcript of the meeting where they came to an agreement.
> I wasn't there.
>
> The parties involved are in court as I write this. Since I have no involvement in the case and don't have anywhere near all of the facts, I'll sit and wait to see what the court decides. I'm just surprised that the meteorite hunter is automatically considered to be at fault by many in the community.
>
> Ohh, People's Court is on too!
> Gotta go.
>
> --
> Richard Kowalski
> Full Moon Photography
> IMCA #1081
>
>
>
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Received on Tue 22 Feb 2011 04:46:02 PM PST