(2 of 2)
Aryeh has been caught in legal tangles before. In 1977 he ran up a $700,000 debt at the MGM Grand Hotel casino in Las Vegas and stopped payment on his checks after he returned to New York. MGM sued and won. In 1982 a New York court ordered him to make good on $183,000 worth of gambling debts he owed to the Aspinall's Club in London.
Aryeh's dispute with Christie's is not the company's first brouhaha. Chairman David Bathurst resigned from his post in July 1985 after admitting that he had reported the sale of three impressionist paintings at a 1981 auction when only one had been sold. He said he feared that the art market would become depressed if it were known that there were no buyers for the two unsold pieces. Christie's was fined $80,000 by New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs, and Bathurst lost his auctioneer's license for two years.
Christie's is obviously embarrassed about the Faberge fiasco, but company officials argue that the house was the victim of an error in judgment by an independent expert. Says Burge: "We are merely on the receiving end of these opinions. Kenneth Snowman is the leading authority on Faberge." Shrugs Snowman: "Everybody can change their minds, I suppose."