Kenyon College court case

[Molly Molloy <mmolloy@lib.NMSU.Edu>]

KENYON COLLEGE WINS $1 MILLION JURY AWARD
Couple found liable for selling books, other rare papers from school library
	Monday, April 14, 2003
NEWS   01C
By Randy Ludlow
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH 	Illustration: Photo, MAP
When night librarian David Breithaupt allowed Kenyon College officials to 
search his home for missing rare books, one title in particular prompted a 
double take.
Along with a 1635 copy of Mercator's Atlas valued at $8,000 and more than 
200 other volumes, officials found the college's copy of Rare Books and 
Manuscript Thefts.
"Isn't that a great item? We recovered it, too,'' said Christopher Barth, 
director of information resources at the Olin and Chalmers Libraries at 
Kenyon College in Gambier.
Nearly three years after the search -- and amid an ongoing FBI investigation 
-- the college has won the largest jury award ever granted in Knox County.
A lawsuit filed by the college led to a $1 million judgment against 
Breithaupt and his girlfriend, Christa Hupp, on Jan. 31.
After four days of testimony, the jury found Breithaupt, 44, and Hupp, 54, 
liable for unjust enrichment and conversion -- the civil equivalent of theft 
-- for taking library items and selling them to eBay bidders and rare-book 
dealers.
None of the items that were sold from the collection at Kenyon, located 40 
miles northeast of Columbus, has been recovered.
Jurors dismissed the Gambier couple's claim that the Kenyon items they 
possessed and sold were taken from discarded boxes of books dumped as trash 
on the library loading dock.
Hundreds of items, including correspondence from famed 20th century authors 
to the Kenyon Review, disappeared from the library beginning in 1998, or 
perhaps earlier, the college's lawsuit claimed.
While he did not have a key to the special-collections section, Breithaupt 
was admitted by security guards and custodians on the pretext he had bent 
his key or accidentally locked it inside, the employees testified.
The couple's financial records, produced during the trial before Common 
Pleas Court Judge Otho Eyster, showed $744,130 in unexplained, nonwage bank 
deposits from 1995 to 2000.
Hupp operated a home business called Caves Curve Books, and Breithaupt 
served nearly a decade as a $10,000-a-year night library supervisor until he 
left in 2000.
Library items sold on eBay included Voyage to South Sea ($1,925); a 
late-1700s government reprint of the Declaration of Independence ($4,250); 
and a rare edition of astronomer Ptolemy's Almagest ($4,750). Buyers came 
from across the United States and from Britain, Canada, Israel, Japan and 
New Zealand.
Officials also alleged that Breithaupt presented the school's first edition 
of Huckleberry Finn, valued at $1,500, to his brother as a gift in 1999.
Breithaupt also was accused of negotiating with a rare book dealer to sell 
Kenyon's copy of a rare, limited edition William Butler Yeats work, 
Trembling of the Veil.
James Burns, a Cleveland lawyer who represents Breithaupt and Hupp, declined 
to comment, saying the couple have requested a new trial. In court papers, 
Burns argued that Kenyon made Breithaupt a scapegoat.
"To conceal and avoid the painful truth that it had simply thrown this and 
other valuable documents away, Kenyon College blamed (Breithaupt). Kenyon 
developed a false but face-saving policy to transform this embarrassing loss 
into 'theft.' ''
Barth said no special-collections materials ever were discarded.
The disappearance of letters, manuscripts and books was discovered in April 
2000 when a Georgia college librarian bid on a Flannery O'Connor letter 
listed for sale on eBay by Hupp.
The librarian soon realized, however, that the letter matched a photocopy of 
the document that Kenyon provided him in 1993. He called Barth, which led to 
the search of Breithaupt and Hupp's home in April 2000.
Barth said the missing materials were not detected because "It is likely 
that none of the items he had taken had been requested to be viewed, so we 
had not searched for those items.''
Kenyon, a private college with 1,573 students, has revamped library 
"procedures and physical security systems from top to bottom,'' Barth said. 
"It seems safe to say this particular event could not happen here again.''
rludlow@dispatch.com

Caption: (1) TIM REVELL | DISPATCH
Christopher Barth, director of information resources at Kenyon College's 
library, holds a 1635 copy of Mercator's Atlas that was recovered from the 
home of a former night librarian.
(2) Map


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republished without permission.





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