Fight for reward drags on

A year and half after the return of the University Museum's statue of Osiris and Crystal Ball, Associate General Counsel Neil Hamburg said yesterday that "everybody" is suing the University in an attempt to claim the $10,000 reward for the return of the statue. "At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if [the plaintiffs'] mothers came forward and made a claim to the reward," Hamburg mused. A lawsuit filed last year by Bruce Sumerfield and Richard McFall, the two men who own the store where the statue was found, charged that they -- and not the University -- were the rightful owner of the statue. Sumerfield and McFall have since withdrawn that complaint and are now trying to stake a claim to the $10,000 reward originally offered by the Museum. The suit claims the men turned over the statue and helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation find the crystal ball because they thought they would get the reward money. Hamburg called the suit "an utter waste of University and judicial resources" yesterday. He said the University is looking to find an impartial third party, such as a retired judge, to preside over the case. Hamburg added that the University is not going to offer to settle the case. "Our position is that . . . [Museum employee] Jesse Canby [who located the statue in the plaintiffs' store] started the process and is entitled to the reward," he said. "We're not going to pay reward money -- unless we are ordered to pay reward money -- to people who don't deserve it." "The tuition is high enough at the University of Pennsylvania without us spending money on inappropriate people," he added. The saga of the statue and the crystal ball began in 1988, when both were stolen from the University Museum. They made headlines again when they were found and returned to the Museum in 1991. The statue ended up in Sumerfield and McFall's South Street store after apparently being thrown in the garbage by someone unaware of the statue's $30,000 value. The two reportedly paid a man known as "Al the Trash Picker" $30 for the statue, and Al is said to have thrown in a table for good measure. On October 24, 1991, about two weeks after Sumerfield and McFall bought the statue, Canby went into the store and thought the statue looked familiar. She then notified the FBI and her superiors at the Museum of what she saw. She then returned to the store with two other Museum employees, who assured the store's owners that the statue had been stolen, and that it belonged to the Museum.

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