Artist Kinkade plans appeal City gallery owners won fraud case
Artist Thomas Kinkade’s lawyer said Tuesday that he plans to fight an arbitration panel’s ruling in favor of the former owners of a Charlottesville gallery. California attorney Dana Levitt said Jeffrey Spinello and Karen Hazlewood, who sold Kinkade’s works in a Downtown Mall gallery from 1999 to 2003, were wrongly awarded $860,000 last week in a fraud case.
Kinkade, known as the “Painter of Light,” has denied the allegations.
The couple, who have been divorced since 2001, argued that they were forced to buy expensive copies of Kinkade’s Christian-themed paintings, some of which did not sell well. Dealers were not allowed to discount the works, but Kinkade’s company sold prints at a fraction of the price in 2002 at Tuesday Morning stores.
Attorney Norman Yatooma, who represents 23 former Kinkade dealers undergoing arbitration, has said that the sale destroyed the value of the artwork, as well as customers’ faith in the dealers.
The Tuesday Morning versions were paper prints, rather than the canvases sold at the downtown gallery, Levitt said.
The sale did not hurt Spinello and Hazlewood, he added, saying that the couple made greater profits afterward.
Yatooma called Levitt’s statement “insane.”
“That was the end of the business,” he said. Former customers called the couple “liars and crooks” and asked for their money back, he added.
“Lots of dealers were successful and still are successful,” Levitt said. “I think there are business mistakes.”
Art sales suffered after the dot-com bust, the Sept. 11 attacks and the SARS epidemic, Levitt argued. “Art is a discretionary purchase.”
But Yatooma said Tuesday that Kinkade’s company, Media Arts Group Inc., never warned Spinello and Hazlewood about the art business’s volatility.
The award, which the couple’s attorney has said could rise to $3.5 million with legal costs included, will have to be certified in court before it is finalized.
Levitt said he plans to argue against the panel’s 2-1 decision in the meantime, while acknowledging, “It’s not easy to get an arbitration award overturned.”
Spinello and Hazlewood were bound by their contract with Kinkade’s company to go to an arbitration panel, rather than filing a lawsuit.
Yatooma said Levitt would have to argue that one of the three arbitrators committed fraud or misconduct for the decision to be overturned, under California law.
“He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance,” he said.
Levitt also disputed Yatooma’s estimate of a $3.5 million award, calling it “wishful thinking on behalf of an expectant attorney.”
A court likely will rule on the matter in late April, Yatooma said.
Contact Kate Andrews at (434) 978-7261 or kandrews@dailyprogress.com.
