"I think it's going to be extraordinarily difficult for them to make a go of it," said Diane Upright, a private dealer and former auction house employee.
In recent weeks the prosecutors have made calls to more than a dozen present and former auction house employees, potential witnesses and lawyers say, asking them for voluntary interviews and testimony before a grand jury.
In the winter of 1931 32 Culbertson and his wife, Josephine Culbertson, played and defeated in a 150-rubber match one of the most prominent players among the former auction bridge authorities, Sidney S. Lenz.
The publicity whereby contract bridge found its way to such players was supplied by another of the former auction bridge experts, Ely Culbertson of New York.
One former auction house official said that just before the higher new sellers' commission went into effect, the company asked top experts to compile a list of preferred clients to be "grandfathered" with lower fees.
The former auction house executive who testified this week that the chairman of Sotheby's was behind a giant price-fixing scandal admitted under cross-examination yesterday that he had long helped cover up the scheme by falsely denying its existence to investigators, investors, company directors and lawyers.
Westreich and her fellow advisers function as the art world's glorified personal shoppers some are former auction-house specialists (or even museum curators) and they generally receive commissions on the value of artworks they buy for their clients at auction and elsewhere, unless they're on long-term and lucrative retainer.
As the estate of a favorite client of the '70s American decorator Michael Taylor comes up for auction, a former protégée recalls her boss.
Richard Driehaus, a car collector from Chicago and a former vendor at the auction, has donated a 1948 Packard "woody" station wagon to Lyndhurst.
Why aren't they paying?'" recalls a former employee of an auction house.
