Court upholds fossil hunters' right to teen T-Rex
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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday denied a rehearing in the five-year ownership battle over Tinker, a 65 million-year-old skeleton of a teenage Tyrannosaurus Rex unearthed in South Dakota.
Commissioners in Harding County, where the fossils were first found in 1998, had asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for another hearing after it validated a lease entitling the county to only 10 percent of any sale proceeds.
Last month's three-judge panel opinion ruled that Ron Frithiof of Austin, Texas, and his partners did not engage in fraud or trespass, and the team was not obligated to tell county officials that they discovered the fossil remains years before the November 2000 lease was negotiated and signed.
Frithiof's attorney, Tom Fritz of Rapid City, said Frithiof feels vindicated and hopes it's the end of a long road.
"It's time to bring this matter to a close and give Mr. Frithiof his dinosaur," Fritz said.
A telephone message left with Ken Barker, a Belle Fourche attorney representing Harding County, was not immediately returned.
Tinker is believed to be the first nearly complete fossilized skeleton of a juvenile T-rex ever found.
Frithiof approached Harding County for a lease after realizing Tinker might have been found on county-owned land. Around the same time, he began negotiations to sell Tinker to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis for $8.5 million.
Barker had argued that the court based its decision on its belief that the county waived or ratified Frithiof's act of conversion, a legal term for wrongly taking another's property. He also argued that the case was decided without consideration of whether Frithiof became an implied trustee of the fossils.
The 2000 lease agreement, which the appeals court ruled could not be rescinded, stipulates that the legal title to the fossil specimen remains with the lessee. The lease promises that the county will receive 10 percent of the actual selling price of any fossils collected from county property.
After Harding County found out about Tinker's discovery and potential value in May 2003, it tried to rescind the lease and filed a lawsuit in August 2004. The suit alleged that Frithiof, Kim Hollrah of Iowa and Melody Harrell of Texas wrongfully and illegally removed the skeletal remains from county property.
Most of Tinker's fossils are in storage in Pennsylvania under the jurisdiction of a federal bankruptcy court after the man hired to restore the fossils filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.
Fritz said Frithiof will now focus on the pieces that still need to be excavated and plans to begin assembling the dinosaur so it can one day be displayed.
