ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A DEALER'S discovery of a $225,000 necklace among an heiress's belongings didn't entitle him to a bonus, the jury found.
Before her death in 1993, Roanoke heiress Marion Via was best known for contributing millions of her fortune to good causes.
Considering her gifts of more than $20 million to the Roanoke Valley's institutions of education, social services and arts, a claim against her estate that went to trial this week seemed like pocket change.
A Roanoke jury awarded $1,500 to a Franklin County antique dealer who never was paid after Via's estate hired him to appraise the contents of her home shortly after she died.
But John W. Elkins was seeking his standard $4,000 fee - and much more. The reason, he said, was that during the appraisal, he found a ruby-and-diamond necklace worth at least $225,000 tucked away in a cabinet drawer.
Because Via's family and John Rocovich, a Roanoke attorney who served as executor of her estate, did not recognize the value of the necklace, Elkins said, he was entitled to a 10 percent finder's fee.
"I enhanced the estate by several hundred thousand dollars," Elkins testified. Had it not been for his discovery, he said, the Vias would have considered the jewelry "junk" and "could very possibly have given it to the housekeeper."
But Rocovich balked at the bill. "He's not entitled to a finder's fee, and it would have been a terrible breach of my duty to pay it," Rocovich testified.
Pat Fragile, who represented Rocovich and the Via estate, portrayed Elkins as an unscrupulous appraiser who "saw an opportunity to make a large profit, and thought that because it was a well-to-do estate, they wouldn't object" to a big bill.
But David Furrow, a Rocky Mount attorney who represented Elkins, asked the jury to compensate his client for services rendered - something the Via estate had refused to do.
"I would submit to you that wealth breeds arrogance ... and the arrogance here is not paying the bill," he told the jury. "Big people have got to pay bills just like little people."
But the jury ruled Elkins was not entitled to his finder's fee. And the award of $1,500 for his appraisal was a victory for Rocovich, who had written to Elkins that such an amount would be a more reasonable fee.
LENGTH: Short : 50 linesby CNB