Drunk Loses $1.35M Painting

He misplaces artwork in drunken haze
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 1, 2010 2:51 AM CDT
Updated Sep 1, 2010 6:30 AM CDT
Drunk Loses $1.35M Painting
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's missing 1857-58 "Portrait of a Girl" is valued at $1.35 million.   (Hammer Museum)

A Manhattan man learned the hard way that if you're going out on the town to get sloshed, you shouldn't take a $1.35 million painting with you. James Haggerty is being sued for the loss by the painting's co-owner, who says she hired him to help sell Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's 1857 Portrait of a Girl, only to have him to tell her he couldn't remember where he left it after a night of heavy drinking, the New York Daily News reports.

Security cameras capture Haggerty leaving the painting at a hotel front desk while he has a brief meeting with a gallery owner and then lingers, drinking, in the hotel bar, according to the lawsuit. He staggers out with the painting after midnight, and arrives back at his Trump Towers apartment nearly two hours later without it. The next day, he told its owners "he could not recall its whereabouts, citing that he had too much to drink the previous evening," the lawsuit states.
(More painting stories.)

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