- Posted November 23, 2018
- Tweet This | Share on Facebook
Judge tells lighthouse lens collector to give up glass
DETROIT (AP) - A judge has ordered a Michigan man to surrender two antique lighthouse lenses worth at least $600,000, months after the collector lost a court battle with the federal government.
Steve Gronow was supposed to turn them over last summer. U.S. Coast Guard officials and a lens expert recently went to his mansion in Howell, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Detroit, but weren't allowed through a gate.
"I have no interest in putting anyone in jail ... but my orders are not going to be disobeyed," U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith said Monday as he gave Gronow until February to produce the lenses.
The government sued Gronow, saying he had no right to lenses from the Spring Point Ledge lighthouse in Maine and the Belle Isle lighthouse in Detroit.
The Maine lighthouse was automated around 1960, and the Detroit lighthouse was replaced in 1930. Gronow bought one lens from a seller on eBay and the other from the Henry County Historical Society in Indiana. The government apparently had lent it to the Indiana group in 1946.
The Coast Guard argued that it still owned the lenses. Goldsmith agreed last spring and gave Gronow a few months to surrender them.
"It is time for the games to end," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Caplan told the judge, seeking approval to use U.S. marshals and "all necessary force."
Gronow's attorney, James Pelland, said Gronow wants to be paid for storing the lenses before he gives them up. Goldsmith, however, said that's a separate matter.
"These essentially were thrown in the trash 70 years ago," Gronow told the judge. "And after not caring for 75 years, I'm sued."
Published: Fri, Nov 23, 2018
headlines Oakland County
- Associations gather for Spring Fling
- Law school’s team wins William and Mary Colonial Cup Competition
- Supreme Court makes it easier to sue for job discrimination over forced transfers
- Oakland County Physician bound over on insurance fraud charges
- Innocence Project leaders present at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Spring Symposium
headlines National
- Incarceration series includes female inmates but doesn’t tell full story
- ACLU and BigLaw firm use ‘Orange is the New Black’ in hashtag effort to promote NY jail reform
- Former DOJ official who alleged election fraud violated at least one ethics rule, ethics committee says
- Winston & Strawn will provide reduced-cost legal services for routine tasks under Winston Legal Solutions umbrella
- Should Justice Sotomayor retire? Chemerinsky, White House haven’t joined calls for her to step down
- Which BigLaw firms are increasing lateral associate hiring the most? One made legal headlines last year