Appellate Court Affirms Damage Award Decrease in VARA Copyright Claim
(July 23, 2019) A trial court properly reduced the damages awarded to an artist whose works were destroyed by his landlord because the jury award double counted the value of the missing artwork.
Christian Narkiewicz-Laine leased space from the defendants but was not current on his rent, so defendants cleaned out the space throwing away its contents. Narkiewicz-Laine claimed that over 1,400 pieces of artwork, which he valued at $11 million, were tossed-out, as well as records that could document the work destroyed. He sued both under the Visual Artists Rights Act (“VARA”) and for common law trespass and conversion.
After a six-day trial, a jury found defendants destroyed four pieces of artwork, awarding $120,000 in damages under VARA and $300,000 in damages under the common law claims. The trial court reduced damages to $300,000 because the court said the VARA damages were contained in the common law calculation, so to award the entire amount would double count the artwork. The trial court also denied plaintiff’s request for attorneys’ fees.
VARA confers on artists the rights to attribution and integrity and, for certain works, the right to prevent the work’s destruction.
Because plaintiff claimed the records of what was in storage were part of the items thrown away, he created an inventory of the lost artwork and testified about it at trial. Defendants attacked his credibility by citing to plaintiff’s 2003 conviction for making a false statement to an FBI agent. Plaintiff objected to using the conviction, but the court limited the jury to consider it only regarding plaintiff’s credibility. The appellate court said there was no error in allowing using the conviction for that purpose.
The appellate court agreed with the trial court’s reduction of the damage award to avoid double recovery for the four pieces of artwork. The appellate court said the $300,000 award on the common law claims for all property lost “necessarily included the subset of works that were specifically covered under the jury’s verdict on the Visual Artists Rights Act claims.”
As to the request for attorneys’ fees, the appellate court affirmed the denial of plaintiff’s request. While VARA does permit the court to award fees to the “prevailing party,” neither the trial court nor the appellate court was persuaded that Narkiewicz-Laine was entitled to attorneys’ fees because the jury awarded damages for only four out of 1,457 pieces of artwork that he claimed were destroyed.
Christian Narkiewicz-Lainev. Kevin C. Doyle, et al., Seventh Cir No. 18-2535 issued July 19, 2019.