“....within a few weeks of the problem’s discovery, two people who worked at Great Lakes’ Personal Property Office retired”
While folks seem to quickly blame the storage firm, and the folks that bought and sold her stuff, it’s quite clear that it was the Navy’s fault.
The reason the storage firm is being sued is that they are the only folks that might have resources and insurance - and lawyers go after the money.
The fault is truly the Navy’s/federal government. They employed truly incompetent federal civilians, who were able to actually “retire” after entire careers of incompetence.
The Navy and the Federal Government is entirely satisfied with the blame being shifted to other folks. Everyone loses, except of course the Navy civilian and federal employees who retire in comfort, oblivious of the mayhem their decades of incompetence have wrought upon the world and victimized service members.
The lesson is, of course, if you want it done right, do it yourself.
Navy on the hook, too? Why? Because this idiot reporter wrote the following line without attributing it to the storage company’s attorney as to why his client is blameless:
“Navy officials stopped paying for her storage in 2010 and told the West Bend company it could sell off the goods”
Good grief. Use some common sense. I would bet when you whip open your parked car door and ding the car next to you; it is the other guys fault for leaving his car to close to where you would be parking 20 minutes later...