9th Circuit OKs legal fees in failed suit over school bus converted to look like Spanish galleon
A school bus converted to a replica 16th-century Spanish galleon and used to transport attendees, hold weddings and provide a stage for poetry readings at events like Nevada’s Burning Man festival wasn’t a protected artwork under a federal statute.
That’s what a federal district court judge decided on summary judgment in a Nevada lawsuit. Then a federal jury subsequently rejected a conversion claim—after the plaintiff artists nixed a lawsuit settlement offer from the defendant property owner, who had burned the wooden superstructure of “La Contessa” and sold the metal hulk as scrap.
So the trial judge awarded attorney’s fees to the defendant, Michael Stewart, under Nevada law, due to the rejected settlement. On Wednesday, the plaintiff artists got more bad news: A federal appeals court upheld (PDF) the summary judgment, as well as pretrial rulings that led up to the jury verdict on the conversion claim and the attorney’s fee award.
Simon Cheffins and Gregory Jones had sought damages from Stewart, contending that the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 prohibited him from destroying their artwork without compensation. But, due to La Contessa’s humble origins as a working school bus—and her continuing, largely utilitarian function even after the transformationmdash;VARA didn’t apply, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals majority wrote.
The plaintiffs had also sought damages for conversion of La Contessa. The pair had originally stored the converted bus on a tract of land with permission of the woman who lived there under life-estate rights. However, she left and, after several years, Stewart, as the new owner of the property, sold the converted bus for scrap. He argued at trial that it was abandoned property.
Courthouse News and Reuters have stories.
