Former gallery owners of Kinkade art win case
CHARLOTTESVILLE — The former owners of Charlottesville’s Thomas Kinkade art gallery have won $860,000 from Kinkade’s company, after successfully arguing that the Christian-themed firm defrauded its dealers. Palmyra resident Jeff Spinello and his former wife, Karen Hazlewood, are believed to be the first to win against the Kinkade company in arbitration. Including legal fees, they stand to receive up to $3.5 million, said the couple’s attorney, Norman Yatooma, who also represents Kinkade dealers in other states who are seeking compensation.
Spinello and Hazlewood argued that the California-based company forced them to buy expensive copies of Kinkade’s paintings, some of which did not sell well. Dealers were not allowed to sell the works at a discount, but Kinkade’s company sold prints at a fraction of the price in 2002 at Tuesday Morning stores.
Yatooma said the sale destroyed the value of the artwork, as well as customers’ faith in the dealers. Former customers called the couple “liars and crooks” and asked for their money back, he added.
But Kinkade’s lawyer, Dana Levitt, said the Tuesday Morning versions were paper prints, rather than the canvases sold at the Downtown Mall gallery.
“Lots of dealers were successful and still are successful,” he said. “I think there are business mistakes.”
Listed prices for a Kinkade lithograph of “Autumn on Mackinac Island,” labeled a new release on www.thomaskinkade.com, range on the Web site from $230 to $1,840, depending on size, medium, numbering and whether it is framed.
In a 2-1 ruling last week, a California arbitration panel found that company officials created “a certain religious environment designed to instill a special relationship of trust” with Spinello and Hazlewood, the Los Angeles Times reported. The panel will include interest, arbitration costs and attorney’s fees in the final award, to be determined in April.
Levitt said that he plans to fight the panel’s ruling but acknowledged, “It’s not easy to get an arbitration award overturned.” He disputed Yatooma’s estimate of a $3.5 million award, calling it “wishful thinking.”
Kinkade, whose logo calls him “Painter of Light,” has denied the allegations.
The arbitration process was “long, nasty, brutal,” Spinello said. The couple was contractually bound to enter into arbitration rather than filing a lawsuit.
“It’s important to me for people to know we weren’t part of it,” Spinello said. “We were duped.”
Spinello opened a Kinkade gallery in Charlottesville in 1999, after he and Hazlewood moved from the San Francisco area. They spent $122,000 to open that gallery and one in Fredericksburg.
The two were encouraged by the California-based company’s moral values, Spinello said.
“These were supposed to be such great Christian people,” Spinello said. “I’m very disappointed. It certainly isn’t what I believed it was. It was all about money”
Their Kinkade stores closed in 2003, and Spinello said he and Hazlewood, who divorced in 2001, have spent “hundreds of thousands” in legal costs since the arbitration case began.
Spinello, now working as a real estate agent, said he’s pleased with the arbitration outcome.
“Score one for the little guy on this one,” he said.
Kate Andrews is a staff writer at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.
