More on Park West vs Fine Art Registry

The following is a statement from one of Park West Gallery websites on the recent court trial on verdict. The last sentence of the statements says that Park West will again sue the Fine Art Registry for defamation. I am sure the Fine Art Registry will also soon release a statement about the case. When released, I will post on the AW Blog.

Park West Gallery Successfully Defends Reputation In Defamation Trial

SOUTHFIELD, MI—April 22, 2010—Park West Gallery is pleased with the recent verdict determining that Park West had not defamed Fine Art Registry, but is disappointed that the jury determined that FAR had not defamed Park West Gallery. FAR’s testimony was that their false and malicious statements were only their opinions and hyperbole, and they pled a defense based on the first amendment.

Park West was seeking damages from the web-based art tagging and art sales site for its nearly three year cybersmear campaign against the gallery. The campaign, which began in 2007 and continues to this day, includes hundreds of internet postings, numerous press releases and nearly 100 videos, all containing false information.

“Although not the central issue of this defamation case, this trial gave us the opportunity to reaffirm the authenticity of Park West’s artwork, which was defended compellingly by our witnesses,” said Mr. Young. The court accepted without reservation the qualifications of the three expert witnesses presented by Park West: Bernard Ewell, American Society of Appraisers and Daniel David, publisher and copyright holder of the Divine Comedy by Salvador Dali as well as retired FBI Art Crime Team agent Robert Wittman, who formed the FBI art crime team and presented expert testimony on art fraud as well as practices and procedures within the art industry.

During the trial, FAR attempted to present three experts on authenticity of art and signatures. None of the three had previously been accepted as experts in any court of law. Two of them—Nicholas Descharnes and Roy Saper—were totally rejected by the court as experts and were determined to have no expertise in the authenticity of graphic art or signatures. The third, Frank Hunter, although accepted by the court subject to cross examination as an expert in graphic art, admitted at his deposition and at trial that he was not an expert on signatures. Their expert witnesses presented an uncompelling account, which the jury rejected, as FAR’s defamation claims against Park West were rejected in totality.

During the trial FAR’s attorneys and witnesses were cited twelve times for violating the court’s rulings regarding the presentation of evidence. Seven of the violations were by the attorneys themselves. On the second violation, Donald Payton, lead counsel for FAR, was told by U.S. Federal Judge Lawrence Zatkoff that he believed that the violation was intentional. On the twelfth violation, Judge Zatkoff imposed a $5000 sanction against Jonathan Schwartz, another of FAR’s attorneys. “Despite the best efforts by the court, the harm could not be undone,” said Mr. Young. “Also, we believe the jury’s award to FAR for a Lanham act violation had no basis in the evidence presented at trial. We are confident that we will prevail at an upcoming new trial, where we are again suing FAR for defamation.”

Park West will continue to aggressively defend its reputation, its brand and the art of its 1.2 million satisfied customers.