Va’Neisha Robinson says she will never quit fighting to keep what she believes has rightfully been hers since 2005.
When she was 15, she says, she bought a cardboard box of stuffed animals for her dog at a yard sale as she was walking through the North Hill area of Akron.
Inside the box, underneath the stuffed animals, she says she found what she believed was just a cool piece of costume jewelry — with the names “King” and “James” and the number 23 on a sleeveless jersey.
Today, Robinson is at the center of a Medina County civil court battle to determine who has legal rights to the white-gold, diamond-studded LeBron James pendant, valued at nearly $10,000.
She insists it is hers. Her courtroom adversary, Maverick Carter, a boyhood friend of James and CEO of his worldwide marketing company, says it is his.
Carter’s mother, Katherine Powers of Wadsworth, is a co-defendant to the complaint.
After the two sides filed court papers Tuesday morning, agreeing to place the pendant in escrow and granting Robinson additional time to elaborate on her claim, Common Pleas Judge James L. Kimbler ruled the pendant will remain in possession of the Wadsworth Police Department until the dispute is settled.
Both sides agree there are no criminal allegations in play.
Robinson, a 21-year-old former amateur boxer, agreed to discuss the case Thursday at the Medina office of her attorney, Matt Bruce. She left little doubt about where she stands.
Two Cleveland television crews, including Beacon Journal news partner WEWS (Channel 5), also attended the interview.
“I don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Robinson said. “I can only hope and pray for the best. But I know I’m going to prove a lot of people wrong.
“Even if you’re in a position where somebody wants to run over you, you don’t have to just lay down,” she said. “You can fight back.
“I know who I’m fighting against, but I don’t care, because I’m not going to be someone’s doormat because they have a better lifestyle than me, or they make more money. That really doesn’t play a factor in my mind,” Robinson said, “because when you’re right, you’re right.”
According to court records and depositions filed in the case, Carter contends James gave him the pendant — one of 10 or 12 made for the NBA star’s close friends and family — as a gift.
How it ended up where it apparently did is not entirely clear.
Carter, through his lawyer, Robert Campbell of Medina, issued a statement following Robinson’s interviews, saying flatly that the pendant belongs to him.
The statement called Robinson’s claim “frivolous and without merit.”
“As is evidenced by [Thursday’s] media blitz by Ms. Robinson,” the statement went on to say, “Ms. Robinson’s complaint is motivated solely by her desire for publicity and financial gain at the expense of Mr. Carter and his mother.
“Mr. Carter always has been, and remains, the rightful owner of the pendant.”
Campbell said it would be inappropriate to comment further with the case pending.
The only thing Robinson doesn’t vividly recall, she said, is the specific street or home where the 2005 yard sale took place. She was just a kid at the time, she said.
But her reaction as she began rummaging through the box of stuffed animals was very clear.
“I thought it was cool,” she recalled thinking when she found the pendant. “I was always an NBA fan, and I liked LeBron. And I still do.
“I knew it was his because it said ‘King 23,’ and then on the back it said ‘James 23,’ so I knew it had something to do with LeBron.
“Living in Akron, we have access to all kinds of LeBron merchandise, because he’s from here,” Robinson said. “So I just thought it was costume jewelry, it was fake, or somebody may have made it.
“I wasn’t sure where it came from, I just knew it was cool and I wanted to wear it.”
Robinson said she wore it for several years while attending Garfield High School.
She said when she was 19 she finally realized the pendant might be valuable and had an Akron jeweler appraise it.
The appraised value was $9,670, she said.
Robinson then put the pendant up for auction on eBay in 2010 with a “Buy It Now” option at the appraised price.
A man in Convoy, in Van Wert County in Northwest Ohio, bought it for his sports bar and grill. He, too, was involved in the court battle for possession, but dropped his claim when he decided “it was just something he didn’t want to pursue any further,” his lawyer said.
When a Cleveland TV station picked up on the eBay angle, the story went public and a meeting was set up between Robinson and Powers, Maverick Carter’s mother, at her home in Wadsworth in July 2010.
Robinson said her mother and Powers were church friends, so she felt the meeting would go well.
It did not.
“I could feel the tension as soon as I got out of the car,” Robinson said.
Court records say the meeting soon became contentious, that Robinson felt threatened at one point and eventually agreed to hand over the pendant to Powers before leaving with her sister and a friend.
A neighbor who heard the heated meeting called 911. Wadsworth police responded, and in the course of their investigation confiscated the pendant.
Bruce, Robinson’s attorney, not only emphasized that she is the rightful owner of the pendant, but also said she intends to pursue monetary claims for “the pain and torment she suffered” at that 2010 meeting.
Ed Meyer can be reached at 330-996-3784 or at emeyer@thebeaconjournal.com.