Fine Art Registry Sues Park West Gallery for Further Defamation
by
Fine Art Registry®
Fine Art Registry has filed a counter-claim against Park West Gallery in the Michigan Oakland County Circuit Court (Case No. 08-096952-CZ), accusing the gallery of defamation.
Park West Gallery has repeatedly uttered the fiction that Fine Art Registry® was exposing Park West's questionable business practices, the quality of the art sold, and assisting victims of Park West because Park West had rejected some sort of business proposal on the part of Fine Art Registry. This myth comes all the way from the mouth of Albert Scaglione on a radio show, from the company's customer services executives to dissatisfied customers who turned to Fine Art Registry for help, from the instructors training prospective auctioneers and associates in an attempt to explain the company's disrepute, on and on. They have told the press and they have told the public through press releases. They have, of course, never produced a shred of evidence to back up their fiction. There isn't any. It was invented out of whole cloth. Were it true there would be emails, letters, recorded conversations, meetings or something to back up their claim.
Fine Art Registry has never asked Park West for anything except to reform their business practices for the sake of their customers, their auctioneers and other staff, the cruise lines on whose ships they hold their auctions, and the art industry in general.
Nevertheless, the defamation continued and Fine Art Registry is finally suing Park West Galleries, Inc, for this and other defamation. Their recklessly made statements, calculated to damage the reputation of Fine Art Registry and to somehow persuade the public that the facts exposed by Fine Art Registry must be false and a result of spite have recoiled against them heavily as they find themselves defendants in a case in which they have no evidence whatsoever to back up their false and defamatory utterances.
The case is before Judge Nanci J. Grant in the State of Michigan Oakland County Circuit Court, in the form of a Counter-Complaint Against Third Party Plaintiff Park West Galleries, Inc.
Don Payton, senior Partner at Kaufman, Payton & Chapa, counsel for FAR® in Southfield and Farmington Hills, Michigan, commented on the counter-claim:
"Fine Art Registry (FAR) has filed a counter-complaint in response to Park West's inaccurate comments in press releases, on Park West websites, and elsewhere, falsely alleging that FAR began reporting on Park West's questionable business activities in retaliation for Park West rejecting a business proposal from FAR. The truth is that Fine Art Registry never, at any time, approached, solicited, or offered Park West any sort of business deal. The facts are that Fine Art Registry began reporting on the sale of allegedly fraudulent artwork by Park West, and Park West's allegedly questionable business practices in order to inform the art world, to help victims, and to prevent these practices from continuing. Park West's concocted story was clearly disseminated in an effort to take attention off Park West's own activities, and to unfairly demonize FAR. Throughout the course of this litigation, the truth will come out and the record will finally be set straight."
Teri Franks, CEO of Fine Art Registry, said, "Their claims are completely unfounded and we have kept hearing them through our members, and through Park West Galleries ex-employees and seen them repeated online and in the media. Enough is enough. We are confident that the court will put an end to this nonsense."
This is a black and white case in which the destructive intention, the damage caused and the lack of any evidence to back up the false statements leave Park West defenseless.
— by Fine Art Registry®
| May 12, 2009
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