United States v. Ann E. Lattimore

Miss Lattimore is a business woman and a collector of fine objects of art: figurines, chinaware, glassware, furniture and paintings.

She closed her apartment in San Francisco in 1949 and sent many of her collected objects in barrels and tea boxes to storage. For several months, 1952-1953, the boxes and barrels were out of storage in the hands of a trusted employee of Miss Lattimore’s, who unpacked about everything in search of one or more items of which Miss Lattimore wanted to make present use. He condensed the contents of 18 barrels into 13 and returned them and the tea boxes to storage. By 1955, Miss Lattimore had taken a small apartment in the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco and ordered the storage company to deliver her collected objects to the apartment at a time when she was absent from the city. Upon her return, she found the contents of her boxes and barrels spread all over the floor of the apartment in broken or scratched or otherwise damaged condition, and many, many items were missing. Damage and loss based on fair market value was $26,000, about $8,000 of which was alleviated by insurance. The district court found that the “loss was caused by agencies outside the…