US SLAPPED FOR SEIZING FORMER JFK BOAT

The US government had no right to seize and auction off a sleek,
22-foot sailboat that once belonged to a teenage John F. Kennedy, a
federal judge has ruled in a case that stemmed from a drug
investigation. US District Judge William G. Young ordered the
government to pay one of the boat's co-owners more than $125,000 to
compensate for seizing the Flash II, a Star class sloop that the late
president owned for six years. In a judgment filed yesterday, Young
ruled that Dr. Kerry Scott Lane, a Florida anesthesiologist, should be
paid $73,898 in compensation plus interest and $51,929 in legal fees
as a result of the wrongful seizure of the sailboat, which Kennedy
sold in 1942 before shipping out to the Pacific in World War II. But
US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan has notified the court that he will
appeal the ruling, and Lane said yesterday that he will, too. Lane
said Young should have awarded him far more in compensation and fees
because the boat was worth roughly ten times the $100,000 it fetched
at an auction of JFK memorabilia at Guernsey's in 2005.

"We won the case, but, financially, I got a raw deal," said Lane, who
lives in West Palm Beach and contends that the value of the boat
plunged before the auction because of bad publicity. "I want my boat
back if I'm not going to be compensated fairly."

The sloop was built in 1930. Kennedy and his older brother, Joseph P.
Jr., bought it several years later, and JFK, then 17, a member of the
Nantucket Sound Star Fleet, raced the boat to an Atlantic Coast
championship. Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized the
sailboat from its storage spot at the Marblehead Trading Co. in
Marblehead in 2004 under a federal law that provides for forfeiture of
assets allegedly gained through drug dealing. The government had
contended that Gregory "Ole" Anderson of Florida, a convicted
marijuana trafficker, had used drug-related profits to help set up the
purchase of the boat by several investors, including Lane, around
1996. The government publicized the seizure in hope of finding people
with a stake in the boat, according to a decision in October by Young.
Lane told the Globe in 2005 that he did not come forward at the time
to say he had invested about $70,000 in legitimate money in the sloop
because he had just joined the staff at St. Anne's Hospital in Fall
River and "didn't want to be associated with a drug dealer."

The government began civil forfeiture proceedings against the owners
of the boat in February 2005, but Lane did not know about it until it
was too late. He challenged the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for
the First Circuit, which concluded in 2006 that the government should
have done more to contact him and sent the case back to the lower
court.

On Oct. 1, Young ruled that the government should never have seized
the boat to begin with, because it had failed to prove that Anderson
used drug money to buy and refurbish the boat. Nor does the
government have any right to the proceeds, he wrote.

But the matter is hardly settled. Sullivan's office said it will
appeal Young's ruling, but did not specify why. Lane's lawyer, Brenda
Grantland of Mill Valley, Calif., said the government's own appraiser
had put the sloop's value at $800,000 to $1 million. But, she said,
the government auctioned it off for $100,000 to a Texas resident in
what her client characterized as a fire sale.