Up in smoke.
"Family must pay for burned Einstein papers" July 07, 2011|Associated Press
SAN JOSE, Calif. - A California family must pay $750,000 for a massive 2007 wildfire that destroyed papers written by Albert Einstein, a jury decided.
The Santa Clara County jury came to its verdict last week against Margaret Pavese, her husband, Lawrence, and her father-in-law, Ernest, in a negligence lawsuit filed by San Jose State University chemistry professor Dan Straus, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
Margaret Pavese was found responsible for starting a 75-square-mile wildfire in September 2007 after she used a metal barrel to burn paper plates and left the blaze unattended. The wildfire destroyed four homes and 20 outbuildings.
She later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor and paid $200,000 in restitution, including $40,000 to Straus for the loss of his two small cabins, an outbuilding, and a trailer.
But the lawsuit specifically addressed the contents of a safe inside one of the cabins that held dozens of pages of calculations and notes handwritten by Einstein, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was a friend and colleague of Straus’s late father at Princeton University.
Straus’s lawyer, Dean Rossi, said three Pavese family members were sued because all of them knew about the fire.
David Spini, an attorney for Ernest Pavese, said he will seek a new trial because the award is excessive. Margaret and Lawrence Pavese did not respond to requests for comment.
Straus, who still has one Einstein document left - a 1954 poem written by the scientist congratulating Straus’s parents on their new baby - said he’s satisfied with the outcome.
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Related: Einstein on Palestine and Zionism
I'm sure that burns up a specific group of supremacists, huh?
