© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(May 2) – A Travis County judge on Monday awarded $1.3 million to two Santa Fe antique dealers who lost a significant amount of their jewelry collection to consignment fraud by a La Grange woman.
The judgment follows a weeklong trial that occurred in February in which a 12-person jury unanimously ruled in the favor of the antique dealers, Eric Salter and Jan Duggan.
Salter and Duggan met the defendant, Rose Marie O’Reilly, in 2011 at an antiques fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Salter and Duggan entered an agreement with O’Reilly in which O’Reilly would sell the Santa Fe dealers’ antique jewelry on consignment in the Austin area and she would keep a small amount of the profit for herself. She also agreed to return any items upon request or items she was unable to sell herself, said Jason Snell, who represented the plaintiffs at trial.
Instead, O’Reilly sold or absconded with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Salter’s and Duggan’s merchandise and only compensated them $8,000. She also ignored requests from Salter and Duggan to return their jewelry.
“She convinced them that if they consigned goods with her, she could sell it at a substantial increase and everyone would profit,” said Snell, founder of The Snell Law Firm in Austin.
Austin attorney Phillip Danks, who represented O’Reilly, said the verdict “was what it was” and that he was “pleased with other aspects of the judgment.”
O’Reilly is currently serving a four-year sentence in federal prison for a separate scheme in which O’Reilly defrauded investors into investing $1.4 million into collective silver antiques and pink diamonds – the proceeds of which she instead used for her own benefit. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of the Western District of Texas convicted O’Reilly in January.
One of the victims of the “silver antiques and pink diamonds” Ponzi scheme was O’Reilly’s former business partner, Nancy Neighbors, who testified at the February trial that she, too, had been tricked by O’Reilly. Snell said Ms. Neighbors’ testimony was one of the strongest pieces of evidence, because Salter and Duggan had a significant “lack of paperwork” to present to the jury regarding their agreement with O’Reilly.
“My clients are not paperwork people; they do things on handshakes and trust,” Snell said. “I don’t think they will ever feel good about what happened because their trust was breached, and she was able to get into their inner circle. I’m not sure the verdict will fix them, but from a pure financial standpoint, the jury’s verdict does help some.”
Snell said so far Salter and Duggan have recovered about 20 percent of their stolen merchandise, and will look into pursuing additional claims against some of O’Reilly’s family members, who may have also been involved in the scheme.
Monday’s final judgment, entered by state district Judge Lora Livingston, included $900,000 in actual damages, $250,000 in punitive damages, $70,427 in attorney’s fees and $50,000 for conversion of personal property.
Salter and Duggan’s legal team also included Jeff Johnson, who also practices at The Snell Law Firm.
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