Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
NEW YORK, Jan 11, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Two members of New York's Audubon String Quartet have received a $200,000 anonymous donation to save their instruments amid a legal dispute.
They had lost a lawsuit filed by fired member David Ehrlich and were ordered to pay him $611,000, The New York Times reported. The musicians had faced bankruptcy liquidation of their instruments to help meet the judgment.
Ehrlich, who sued because he had been fired from the quartet, told the Times he did not mean for his former colleagues to lose their instruments, but he needed the money to pay his legal team.
But an anonymous donor stepped forward with $200,000 and Ehrlich said he was accepting the money as a settlement so a bankruptcy trustee will leave the instruments alone.
"I don't want them to lose every little thing that they had," Ehrlich said. "If they can come out of this with something, then I would feel better about it too."
Ehrlich said he also dropped a demand for a letter of apology from the remaining quartet members.
"Nobody would believe they really meant it," he said. "It would even create worse feelings toward me."
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
