Opinion ID: 4015399
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Post-Judgment Shenanigans

Text: Nearly a year later, on August 21, 2012, Rodríguez, who 5 Judge Jaime Pieras, Jr. presided over the copyright action, but after final judgment was entered, the case was later assigned to Judge Fusté for limited post-trial matters. 6 The record does not make clear why the other parties — Benin and his wife, Phillipa Ashby — were not also listed on the judgment. 7 The jury awarded $71,554.23 for outstanding loan payments, $187,832 in salary, $32,085 in commission payments, and $57,350 in reimbursements for expenses. - 5 - had been unable to recover one dime on his judgment, electronically filed a motion asking the district court to order the sale of Coquico's assets to satisfy the judgment.8 Accordingly, on September 11, 2012, the district court approved the seizure and sale of Coquico's copyrights and trademarks to satisfy the debt.9 In June 2013, Coquico received notice from the district court that the sale of its intellectual property had been scheduled for July 11, 2013. On July 8, 2013, three days before the scheduled sale, Benin's mother, Acquanetta, who was not represented by counsel, sought to intervene in the collection action and to stay execution, claiming that she was the record owner of the property set for sale having previously purchased the relevant intellectual property from Coquico years before. Notably, in support of her motion to intervene, Acquanetta filed notarized transfer documents 8 When motions are filed electronically using the CM/ECF system, notifications are automatically sent to all parties in the case who have provided an e-mail address. According to district court rules, the court sends pro se litigants who are not registered to use the CM/ECF system paper copies of all documents filed in their case. 9 The district court approved the sale of the same copyrights and trademarks that had been at issue in the copyright action, namely: (1) Comun by Coquico Copyright number VA0001075653; (2) Coquico: We Sing Copyright numbers TX0005550274, TX0005535397; (3) Musical plush toy frog named 'Comun' A commissioned work for Coquico, Inc. by Michael Tian Copyright number V3473D525; (4) Rufus/by Coquico, Inc. Copyright number VA0001138519; (5) Tata/by Coquico, Inc. Copyright number VA0001138520; and (6) Trademarks: Reg. Nos. 2,534,754; 2,560,104; 2,541,228. For clarity, we will refer to the copyrights and trademarks collectively as intellectual property. - 6 - that seemed to show that Benin, acting as CEO & Founder of Coquico, had assigned the intellectual property to her in 200610 — over a year before Coquico filed its copyright action against Rodríguez and Identiko. To complicate matters further, Acquanetta's filings indicated that the copyright assignment had not been recorded with the United States Copyright Office until June 4, 2012 — more than six years after it was ostensibly assigned to her and, important for our purposes today, a year after Rodríguez obtained judgment against Coquico in the collection action. In tandem with his mother's filing in the collection action, Benin moved pro se11 to likewise stay the sale12 of the 10The text of the purported copyright assignment actually contains no date but the second page of the document, which contains the signatures, includes a notary public signature dated January 23, 2006. 11According to the district court docket, Coquico's and Benin's trial attorney was terminated as of October 3, 2011, a few weeks after the writ of execution of judgment was entered. No other attorney entered an appearance on their behalf. Both Benin's and Acquanetta's motions to stay were identified as being pro se motions. Rodríguez pointed out to the district court, however, that Benin's motion to vacate appeared to have been written and signed by an attorney. In a subsequent bankruptcy proceeding, discussed in more detail below, Benin acknowledged that the motions were in fact prepared by Coquico's bankruptcy attorney, Kahiga A. Tiagha, and mailed for filing from his law office in Philadelphia. In re Coquico, Inc., 508 B.R. 929, 935 (Bankr. E.D. Pa. 2014). The bankruptcy court mused that these attorney filings in pro se clothing may have constituted fraud on the court. 12Unlike Acquanetta, Benin, if you recall, was already a party to the action and did not need to move to intervene. To review, although the judgment was entered against Coquico only, - 7 - intellectual property, arguing, for the first time, that Acquanetta was an indispensable party to the action because she, not Coquico, owned the property.13 In short, despite Benin's prior, consistent representations, not only in his copyright action but also in the collection action, that Coquico — not Acquanetta — was the owner of the copyrights, Benin now asserted that his mother had purchased the intellectual property back in 2006. Therefore, he claimed that she was a necessary party to the collection action with an interest relating to the subject of the action, Fed. R. Civ. P. 19(a)(1)(B), who had been improperly excluded. The district court denied both Acquanetta's motion to intervene and Benin's motion to stay by paper order, explaining that it would not allow intervention on a matter concluded by judgment a long time ago, especially when the public auction for the sale of the intellectual property was set for the next day. At the time it docketed this order, on July 9, 2013, the district court was not aware that just that day Coquico, represented by counsel, had filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code, 11 U.S.C. §§ 101 et seq., Coquico, Benin, and Benin's wife, Phillipa Ashby, had all been parties to the collection action. 13 Benin also argued that Rodríguez had failed to properly serve the defendants — Benin, his wife, and Coquico — with Rodríguez's motion requesting the sale of Coquico's intellectual property. But Rodríguez's motion was filed electronically using the CM/ECF system. - 8 - in the bankruptcy court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Upon learning of the filing, the district court stayed the case pending resolution of the bankruptcy proceeding.