A couple of years back, there was a news story about some professional diver/salvage guys who searched for sunken treasure, and they found lots of Spanish gold, and then Spain went to court, and the (American) court said the gold belonged to Spain and all had to be returned. (!?) At the time, I joked that judge should have been abducted by frogmen and spanked with a flipper. But that judgment is one of the most unfair rulings ever made, surely! If anyone can lay claim to the gold, isn’t it the country it was looted from + the guys who found and recovered it? Really Judge Jerk, Spain gets it all? This is the kind of ruling that proves our judicial system is just a bunch of power-mad, corrupt buffoons who should be completely ignored all the time, as they’re clearly just making it up as they go along according to their own whims! Making a ruling like that is about as unjust as you could possibly get, and that judge should clearly be fired and disbarred for making it. (What a douche bag! I’m surprised he didn’t just award it all to Goldline!)
So I don’t know how this turned out, but some guy just found a big load of platinum in a WW2 wreck, so it reminded me of this sunken treasure thing. So anyway, the way it looks now, the people who find and recover sunken treasure have to work for free and pay legal fees for which they are screwed by asinine judges. Have I got it right so far? So the only course of action if this ruling stands for the Spanish galleon treasure hunters, if they have to give it all back, is this: they should take all that they recovered out on their boat and dump it somewhere in the ocean randomly without looking at any maps or anything, and then say to the judge and Spain: “We dropped it back in the ocean: if you can find it and bring it up, it’s yours. That’s what we had to do, and you denied us any credit or compensation, so you have to do it all yourselves if you want it. And this will show you why you shouldn’t gyp us out of our share in the future, you dummies!”
Sound fair to you? I think it’s the only fair thing except to have done what might have been fair to begin with: split it all evenly between the country of origin, the treasure hunters, and Spain. And I’m not so sure Spain should get any anyway. After all, was it not an “Act of God” that caused them to lose it in the first place? And as extreme Catholics, doesn’t that prove He was mad at them and didn’t want them to have it anyway? I can’t think of why He wouldn’t want them to loot everyone else’s gold, but who am I to question His will? And who are they, too? Plus, since it is an “Act of God” (a storm, actually, I think caused the sinking of the galleon; and an insurance company would use this excuse to get that same judge, I’m sure, to make them not have to pay a deserving customer in need, so that would show it really is one.), the separation of Church and State should surely apply to prevent the judicial branch of government from having any authority whatsoever in this case. If the government can’t have a manger scene, then the government can’t award gold God decided to withhold from Spain back to them: so sayeth the ACLU! (Or at least they should say, unless they want to have this separation of Church and State thing cut both ways, which would be a cross, and that’s Christian, and so also religious, so it must be removed and disallowed!) {<Can I make that argument and have a judge rule in my favor? Because that’s how ridiculous things are getting! When judges can’t make even a sensible ruling whatsoever, we start to lose all faith in our legal system! And after all, isn’t that a lawyer’s job? So now judges are horning in on the lawyers’ jobs? That’s not fair! How will lawyers cheat people themselves if all the judges are beating them to it? It’s so unfair!}
In any case, without compensating the recovery team very handsomely, this is as absolutely clear a case of injustice as one can imagine in modern times in such a case, and it completely undermines the legitimacy of U.S. courts, which I wouldn’t respect enough at this point to decide for me what kind of pizza to get! Shame on all these jerks! This whole thing makes me see red! (Coincidentally, the color of the Spanish flag! BTW, I love Spain, but they really ought to pay these divers well, or they might not decide to find anymore of their treasure for them in future! And really, a modern court decides that Spain legally looted gold from the New World? Wow! No wonder the U.N. hates America, with rulings like this.)
Here’s the story (I just found it!):
And here’s the newest wrinkle:
