Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Kinkade Loss

The San Francisco Chronicle: "A federal appeals court has some dark news for the self-described 'Painter of Light,' Thomas Kinkade - it has restored an arbitration panel's $2.1 million award to two former gallery owners who say Kinkade's company duped them into investing their life's savings in a doomed enterprise. A federal judge in San Francisco overturned the [arbitration] panel's decision in 2007 .... On Tuesday, however, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the company 'received a fair hearing from the arbitrators' and must pay $860,000 in damages to the former gallery owners ... and more than $1.2 million in attorneys' fees and arbitration expenses."