Court Opinion

ID: 9812733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:46:19.613253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:26:11.160617
License: Public Domain

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge,
concurring dubitante:
If the question in this case is whether Potocki believed that the violin was a Stradivarius, I agree completely with the majority’s analysis.
But if the issue instead is the value that Potocki attributed to the violin, discounting for the possibility that it was a fake, then we are faced with a different question. Even if Potocki held only a 1 in 100 hope that the violin was a Stradivarius, (which, he told Sprysak, could fetch 1.5 million dollars), the expected value to him would still be $15,000, well above the $5,000 required by the statute. This leads me to think that sufficient evidence might well exist that Potocki believed the violin to be worth at least $5,000. But it seems that the government has not adduced anything in support of this approach, and, hence, I cannot conclude that the Court is wrong to reject it. I do find the question to be a tad puzzling, however — enough to make my concurrence in this part of the Court’s opinion dubitante.
In any event, I have no questions with respect to the Court’s opinion on the inter*158state commerce issue, and I therefore concur fully in that part of the opinion and in the result reached by the majority.