'Portrait of a Girl,' the missing painting worth $1.35 million. Luckily it is not the Mona Lisa - worth Billions of Dollars!!
Kristyn Trudgeon is suing over the loss of her painting.
If you are responsible for a prized painting worth USD $1.35 million dollars, will you go on a drunken spree and lose the painting?? The answer to most of us is no.
But to one Manhattan man, James Haggerty, the booze is more important than the painting. And for that stupid act, he is now being sued for losing the USD $1.35 million painting.
He blames the booze - for losing the Jean Baptiste Camille Corot masterpiece, "Portrait of a Girl,".
It vanished following a booze session at The Mark hotel, downtown Manhattan, New York, USA.
The artwork's co-owner, Kristyn Trudgeon, is of course super furious and isn't buying Mr Haggerty's tale.
"I think he's a complete fumbling idiot," a visibly annoyed Trudgeon said outside her West Side apartment. "He's just a complete a--hole."
Trudgeon and Tom Doyle, who co-own the painting, had hired Haggerty, an old pal, to assist with a possible sale of "Portrait of a Girl" to London gallery owner Offer Waterman.
A July 28th 2010, afternoon appointment in Doyle's Empire State Building office fell apart when the Brit wanted a closer look at the painting.
The men agreed to meet later at midtown bistro Rue 57 with Doyle,who then ordered Haggerty to take the painting to The Mark, which is on the upper East Side, for further inspection by Waterman.
What happened next remains a boozy blur.
The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, says hotel security footage at 10:54 p.m. shows Haggerty sitting at a table with the painting.
Six minutes later, he left the painting at the hotel's front desk and entered its bar with Waterman, who yesterday told the Daily News he was annoyed that Haggerty showed up without an appointment.
"That struck me as wrong," he said in a phone interview from London.
At 11:30 p.m., the two men left the bar, retrieved the painting and had a conversation in the hotel lobby, court papers say.
"Something just didn't feel right and I didn't want to be involved," Waterman said. "So I said no, and I said goodbye."
Haggerty went back to the hotel bar at 11:34 p.m. and once more deposited the painting at the front desk.
He resurfaced some 90 minutes later, the suit says, when he stumbled out with the painting and a doorman asked if he needed a taxi. "No," Haggerty allegedly slurred. "I have a car."
At 2:30 a.m., he finally returned home to his Trump Place apartment, minus the painting. Later that morning, the suit says, he informed Doyle that he couldn't recall its whereabouts because of his boozy blowout.
"We're skeptical as to the explanation," said Max DiFabio, a lawyer for Trudgeon.
The painting was part of a collection that made the rounds of museums in Paris, Beijing, San Francisco, Tokyo and Buffalo.
Doyle, an executive with Imperial Jets, did not return calls, and Haggerty, who also works at the company, was missing in action at his homes in Manhattan and Long Island.
"Until we are able to account for that one hour and 40 minutes, we suspect anything," DiFabio said.
Sometimes a booze can cost you millions of dollars!!
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