> You're saying Hembach was 1) the bankruptcy trustee for Commodore-Amiga,
> and 2) subsequently the bankruptcy trustee for Escom

Yes, exactly.

> and 3) at the time of the three $1 transactions from Commodore-Amiga to
> Escom he was *concurrently* the trustee for *both* bankrupt companies?

While he *acted* as the trustee for both companies in 1998, I'm not sure if he did legitimately so considering that Commodore-Amiga (and probably Escom as well) had already been liquidated (and thus ceased to exist) before. So the questions to be asked are: 1. Can someone act on behalf of a non-existing company which he had been the trustee of back when it still existed? 2. Can a non-existing company transfer assets to another (existing or non-existing) company?
The notary public in 1998 acknowledged Hembach as attorney for both CBM and Commodore-Amiga, based on their May 1995 contract with Escom, and as attorney for Escom, based on Hembach's July 1996 constitution as Escom's trustee.

> I looked at the three $1 transactions and I didn't see it there either
> (however I may have overlooked it!). Did you see it in there?

Quite to my surprise I don't. They mention "Amiga Kickstart ROM version 1.3" and "Amiga Kickstart ROM version 2.04" but quite shockingly nothing about "3.0" or "3.1". I really don't know what to make of this. Nicely spotted. Now what are the implications?

> one reason that Commodore-Amiga might not have transferred the 3.1
> and prior Amiga OSs to Escom is because the rights to those may possibly
> have been partially encumbered to third parties, say through licensing or
> IP claims by contributors. Candidly, I don't know though exactly who such
> parties might be. Villagetronic? The narrator.device people?

Interesting thought.

"Commodore discontinued licensing the Amiga's speech software from SoftVoice, Inc., so (officially) beginning with this release, the "Say" program, DEVS:narrator.device, and LIBS:translator.library were no longer included on the Workbench disks. According to Matt Sealey, the guys who designed translator and narrator had a spat with Commodore, much like William Hawes did (ARexx), so Commodore had to withdraw it from the OS distribution."
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_21.html

"Michael C. Battilana of Cloanto notes that: '[...] In the early 1990s we had also done some operating system improvements, e.g. to printer drivers and DataTypes, among others. This resulted in our code being included in the 3.1 release. So, technically (and legally), we are co-authors of 3.1.'"
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_amigaforever.html

"Cloanto Italia srl, being [...] a co-author of the operating system, obtained multiple licenses over different versions and components of these original ROM and operating system files [...]. This licensing process began before the initial publication of Amiga Forever in 1997 (the first operating system distribution licenses date back to before the 1994 Commodore liquidation, by which time Cloanto already was both a co-author and a license holder)"
http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-122

"William Hawes is no longer involved in development of Amiga programs because of quarrels in the past with Commodore about the licensing of ARexx"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx#History

IIRC Commodore included ARexx in AmigaOS 3 without Hawes' permission. That might indeed have been an issue for the sale of the rights to software containing this component.