The Onion’s bid for the conspiracy website was supported by the families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting and a nonprofit focused on ending gun violence.

“It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added.

  • sol@lemm.eeEnglish
    45·
    16 days ago

    Shouldn’t that be a “oh well, sucks. but a sale is a sale” problem?

    “A sale is a sale” works fine when both sides to the transaction are well-informed and acting for themselves. When you are selling assets for someone else’s benefit, you generally have extra obligations to them, because otherwise you don’t really have an incentive to achieve a good price. So courts do generally have some oversight over sale of the assets of a bankrupt estate, to ensure that the trustee is not short-changing creditors just to get the job done quickly.

    A complicating factor here is that the Sandy Hook families (who as far as I know are the large majority of the creditors) also supported the sale.

    • RobotToaster@mander.xyzEnglish
      5·
      16 days ago

      A complicating factor here is that the Sandy Hook families (who as far as I know are the large majority of the creditors) also supported the sale.

      I assume there are other creditors who didn’t?

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
        2·
        16 days ago

        AFAIK the damages paid to the Sandy Hook families were the sole reason he went bankrupt in the first place; without them he’d be profiting.