Opinion ID: 179728
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Remey Connection

Text: The National Spiritual Assembly also argues that the Second International Council and Bahá'í Publishers are bound by the injunction through privity with Remey. This argument is based on trademark-registration filings with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in which Neal Chase, the current president of the Second International Council and Bahá'í Publishers, explained that the throne to the Davidic kingdom passed by succession from Bahá'u'lláh to Abdu'l-Bahá, to Charles Mason Remey, to Pepe Remey (Remey's adopted son), and now to him. The National Spiritual Assembly treats these filings as an admission of legal successorship to Remey, who in turn was legally identified with the Hereditary Guardianship. The district court treated the trademark-registration filings as nonbinding evidentiary admissions rather than binding judicial admissions. See Help at Home, Inc. v. Med. Capital, L.L.C., 260 F.3d 748, 753 & n. 2 (7th Cir.2001); Higgins v. Mississippi, 217 F.3d 951, 954 (7th Cir.2000); Murrey v. United States, 73 F.3d 1448, 1455 (7th Cir.1996); Keller v. United States, 58 F.3d 1194, 1198 n. 8 (7th Cir. 1995). The National Spiritual Assembly apparently agrees with this characterization, but argues that the court gave them insufficient weight. We find no fault with the district court's treatment of this factual matter. Other than the version of spiritual-leadership succession described in trademark filings, the National Spiritual Assembly offered no evidence of a link between Remey and the Second International Council or Bahá'í Publishers. Indeed, Remey had no involvement in either organization and died more than 25 years before the Second International Council was established. Neither the Second International Council nor Bahá'í Publishers received any money, property, or other assets from Remey or the Hereditary Guardianship. On these facts the district court properly concluded that the Second International Council and Bahá'í Publishers are not successors to Remey. See Walling, 321 U.S. at 674, 64 S.Ct. 826 (successors are those to whom the business may have been transferred); Flowdata, 154 F.3d at 1355 (nonparty successorship liability under injunction requires a substantial continuity of identity); cf. Golden State Bottling Co., 414 U.S. at 179, 94 S.Ct. 414 (finding bona fide purchaser of a business enterprise was the legal successor to the enterprise and thus subject to enterprise's liability); Reich, 50 F.3d at 417 (a company that acquired the business subject to this court's order was legal successor and bound by the order). AFFIRMED.