[Ganoksin] Emerald Case - Have You seen this ring?

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Have You seen this ring?

For additional information, contact
Fred Ward, Blue Planet Gems, Inc.
7106 Saunders Court, Bethesda, MD 20817 USA.
Tel 301-983-1990 Fax 301-983-3980

Unretouched photograph of ring as delivered; April 14, 1994.

This emerald and diamond ring is the centerpiece of an important court case in Washington, DC. The outcome will affect everyone in the gem trade, redefining the scope of jewelers' and dealers' responsibilities. To prevent this case from becoming a precedent, please help us find a vital piece of information about this ring that can change an unjustified verdict.

As you see above, the ring we at Blue Planet Gems, Inc., delivered on April 15, 1994, featured a beautiful whole emerald. After the buyer hit the emerald on her kitchen counter, fracturing it from girdle to girdle, someone still unknown to us soldered sizing beads into the mount (see picture below) and put one or more fillers into the fracture. It is essential to find whoever performed those two tasks. In court, the ring owners and State Farm Insurance blamed us as the sellers. The customer who broke her emerald charged us with knowingly selling a fractured and filled emerald and with putting in sizing beads.

Because adding sizing beads and filler for a customer are legitimate actions, there is no liability to the jeweler or goldsmith for coming forward. Whatever was done to the ring between May 10 and August 8, 1994-the period when this work would have been completed-was well before this lawsuit was filed.

We have consistently maintained our innocence, yet a Washington, DC District Court has found for the ring owners. Even though the buyer broke the stone and State Farm refused to honor its claim, we will be forced to pay several hundred thousand dollars for what others did wrong.

Please help us right this wrong! Allowed to stand, the case will set a terribly dangerous precedent for the gem trade. The only means open to us to prove our innocence is to produce an affidavit from the person or persons who sol-dered the sizing beads and filled the emerald. We believe the work was done either in the Washington, DC area or in New York City, where the husband of the ring's owner traveled weekly. If anyone knows anything whatsoever about the ring, the beads, or the filler, please contact us. Search your memories and files for the owners: Dorree Waldbaum Lynn, a psychologist in Washington and her husband Michael Lynn, who was an architect in New York and now lives in Washington. We will receive any information in confidence.

The ring mount as it now exists, after State Farm, which did not and does not own the ring, had it cut apart, thus destroying valuable evidence. Note sizing beads of a different color, a different carat gold, and a different quality from the ring itself.
Unretouched photograph made October 13, 1995

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