Aug. 19, 2008 — The mansion regarded as the least valuable of the three Jeffrey Prosser residences — the one on Lake Placid, N.Y. — has been sold for $3.55 million, but the sale is subject to further litigation.
The sale has been approved by Judge Judith Fitzgerald, presiding over the bankruptcy trials of Prosser, former owner and CEO of Innovative Telephone. But Prosser's wife, Dawn, has appealed the decision to the federal district court on St. Thomas.
Dawn Prosser claims half ownership in the house, but Fitzgerald has ruled that the whole house belongs to the Prosser creditors and must be sold.
The property is described in the judge's order as "a single-family residence consisting of a luxury vacation home, guest house, boat house and garage located on 264 feet of waterfront footage on Lake Placid." The property is on 0.82 of an acre and is currently assessed by local authorities at $2.2 million.
The other Prosser residences are in West Palm Beach, Fla., and on St. Croix.
The property's sale was managed by James P. Carroll, the court-appointed Chapter 7 trustee in the case. He also managed previous sales of two vehicles — including a Mercedes — and two boats that had been associated with the Prosser summer place. (See "Prosser Loses Another Round, Plus SUV and Boat.")
According to the judge, Carroll mounted a "robust" effort to sell the place, which culminated in an auction with two active bidders.
After a couple of weeks of vacation, Fitzgerald will be back on the Prosser case Aug. 19 for an afternoon's worth of hearings in Pittsburgh, and has assigned the entire week of Aug. 25 for hearings on St. Thomas.
The Pittsburgh agenda will include some aspects of the Lake Placid sale, disputes about the proposed sale by Christie's of various works of art, and an attempt by the trustee to sell "Dawn Prosser's interest in a certain collection of fine wine, champagne, liquors and other spirits." The trustees and the creditors say that these items were purchased with corporate funds and belong to the creditors; the Prossers say they are owned by Dawn Prosser and should not be sold.
The V.I. agenda, a 12-page document, deals primarily with the Prosser camp's efforts to define certain assets, including the residences, as exempt from the bankruptcy sales. There will also be an effort by the lawyers for the other trustee, Stan Springel who handles what had been Prosser's corporate interests, to get Prosser's adult children to turn over various valuables that Springel contends belong to the creditors, not to the younger Prossers.
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