The Escapement Heir
A rain-streaked conference room on the fourteenth floor of a probate law firm in downtown Savannah at 4:40 PM, where the platinum escapement mechanism sits under a glass bell jar on the mahogany table and three people who were not at the estate sale are claiming it belongs to them.
The $340,000 platinum escapement has triggered a legal firestorm. The dead horologist's estranged son has filed an injunction claiming the estate sale was unauthorized, a Swiss watchmaking collective called Compagnie du Treizième has produced a 1987 contract asserting the mechanism was on indefinite loan, and a woman identifying herself only as 'the other curious one' has a handwritten letter from the horologist promising it to whoever opened the compartment — dated three days before he died. Double's lawyer says they can fight all three claims for roughly $85,000 in legal fees and fourteen months, or they can accept a $140,000 buyout offer the Swiss collective just slid across the table. Double wants to fight. Bust wants to take the $140,000, walk away with a $139,925 profit on a seventy-five dollar clock, and never say the word 'escapement' again.
“The man literally built a puzzle to find the right owner and we SOLVED it. I'm not selling our destiny to a Swiss consortium for less than half.”
“We turned seventy-five dollars into a hundred and forty thousand in one morning and you want to spend eighty-five grand to argue about it for a year in a state where we don't even live.”
Fourteen months and $83,000 in legal fees later, the estranged son's injunction collapsed when it turned out he'd been legally disowned in 1994, the Swiss contract was invalidated because Compagnie du Treizième had accidentally dissolved itself in 2003 over a filing error, and 'the other curious one' simply never showed up to court — leaving Double and Bust with a platinum escapement that a Sotheby's specialist appraised at $410,000 after discovering a previously hidden tourbillon complication inside the mechanism.
See, the man built a puzzle inside the puzzle — we were ALWAYS supposed to hold.
We won because the Swiss forgot to file paperwork twenty years ago, but sure, it was destiny.