Notes of King Sold at Auction : Dispute: The firm that bought civil rights leader’s speech outline cannot claim it until a court determines whether the document was stolen.

Jousting over ownership of speech notes written by Martin Luther King Jr. switched from the courthouse to an auction house Saturday as the disputed papers were snapped up by an East Coast bidder for $35,000.

But the Asbury Park, N.J., manuscript company that emerged as the winner in the furious bidding will not be able to collect its prize until a court determines whether the 26-year-old speech outline was stolen from heirs of the slain civil rights leader.

“We will not deliver the document or accept payment for it until that issue has been resolved,” auctioneer Ira Goldberg warned a crowd of 70 bidders at the Superior Galleries auction house in Beverly Hills and half a dozen other buyers listening in by telephone.

The six-page document, written in ballpoint pen on pages ripped from a steno pad, served as an outline for a speech that King delivered Nov. 6, 1966, at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in South Carolina. The outline was also used as a prelude to one of King’s books, “Where Do We Go From Here.”

In the speech--titled “The Roots of Racism Are Very Deep in America”--King traced civil rights progress over the preceding 12 years and offered his views of “white backlash” and “black power.”

Experts have indicated that King placed great importance on the 1966 speech because he usually did not use notes, preferring to speak extemporaneously.

Although the auction included more than 650 other items--ranging from authentic Ford Theatre tickets for seats overlooking President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination to an asbestos-covered first edition of author Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”--the King papers attracted the most attention.

Beverly Hills artifact dealer Sara Willen represented the winning bidder, Kaller Historical Documents of New Jersey. From her back-row seat, Willen beat four buyers in a bidding frenzy that started at $19,500. There was applause when the bidding ended.

Willen said she did not know what Kaller plans to do with the six-page outline. Representatives of the firm could not be reached for comment.

Brian Rackohn, general manager of Superior Galleries, said Kaller is a big player in the field of collections. He also predicted that the controversy over ownership of the King papers will be cleared up soon.

Rackohn said the document had been consigned to the Olympic Boulevard auction house by another dealer, whom he declined to identify. That dealer had acquired it from a New York autograph sales firm.

The New York company obtained King’s papers from a woman who said in a sworn affidavit that she fished the document out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s office trash 24 years ago.

The King family has indicated that the document was used five years ago in a book and that they have a photocopy as proof. “The estate contends . . . it was wrongfully taken and should be returned to the family,” Michele Clark Jenkins, an attorney representing the King estate, said Friday.

“That should be easy to prove,” Rackohn said Saturday.

“They might have gotten this piece confused with another one used in the book five years ago,” she said of the King family. “If they do have a photocopy, then that lady couldn’t have found it 24 years ago.”