It’s all about the jewelry. A German Insurance company called Allianz has sued celebrity heiress Paris Hilton because she is holding jewelry that doesn’t belong to her, and for breach of contract. A spokesman for Paris Hilton basically says, in short, that Paris doesn’t have the jewelry, because it was stolen from her. This may very well be a real life example of the phrase: “more money, more problems”.
This all started when Paris Hilton borrowed $60,000 worth of jewelry from a Manhattan jeweler called Damiani, in 2007. I’ve no idea what the reason was that Paris wanted to borrow the jewelry, or what the actual jewelry in question even looks like. To me, $60,000 is an astoundingly high amount of money, so it doesn’t really surprise me that there was some sort of insurance involved with this loan. It is my understanding that this is where the Allianz insurance company steps into the story.
It seems that one part of the insurance agreement included a promise that Paris Hilton would store the borrowed jewelry in a safe or a vault when she wasn’t actually using it. According to Allianz, Paris wasn’t keeping up with that promise. Instead, these jewels were siting unguarded on a closet shelf in Paris Hilton’s mansion in Los Angeles.
Perhaps, no one would have been the wiser that Paris had broken the promise to keep the expensive jewelry safely locked away when she wasn’t wearing it, if it wasn’t for an unfortunate event. It seems that Paris Hilton forgot to lock the doors of her mansion before leaving to attend a Hollywood party on December 19, 2008. While she was gone, someone came into her mansion and stole the jewelry she borrowed from Damiani, as well as $2.7 million worth of other jewelry (that I assume was owned by Paris). Oops!
The story gets more tangled from here. Allianz says that it paid out for the claim that Damiani filed when the jeweler learned the the jewelry that Paris had borrowed was stolen. But, after that, Allianz says that Los Angeles police were able to recover the jewelry, and that they returned to Paris Hilton. If this is true, then Paris Hilton has been holding onto the jewelry, for whatever reason, ever since then. Allianz has sent multiple requests to Paris Hilton, asking her to give back the jewelry she borrowed, but to no avail. This is what lead the German insurance company to sue Paris for negligence and breach of contract.
Paris Hilton’s spokesperson, on the other hand, says that the jewelry that Paris borrowed from Damiani was, in fact, never recovered. Instead, Los Angeles police were able to locate only the costume jewelry that was stolen the same night as the $60,000 jewelry that was insured by Allianz. I guess it would be impossible to return something that you do not actually have. The question becomes, does Paris have the jewelry that came from Damiani, or doesn’t she? It looks like she will need to make an appearance in court, in order to have this whole kerfuffle sorted out.
Image by christopherharte on Flickr