6 ms·

Assuming the plaintiff is somehow correct and it is a Peter Doig painting, this doesn't sound remotely fair to me: Some 16 year old kid paints something, figur

by Zikes 10y ago

Assuming the plaintiff is somehow correct and it is a Peter Doig painting, this doesn't sound remotely fair to me: Some 16 year old kid paints something, figures it's worth $100 and sells it for that amount. 40 years later it's now worth ~25 million dollars. The original creator never promised that value to the buyer. On the very remote chance that Peter Doig loses the case, what could he realistically owe? The buyer still has exactly what they paid for, and nothing less. The buyer didn't buy the painting with the expectation that it would someday be worth millions. I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment.

Sanddancer 10y ago
That's not what this case is about. This is about who painted a work of art that could potentially be worth many millions of dollars. Peter Doig was living a pretty nomadic life at the time, and a lot of public records haven't been digitized due to time and cost. So at the moment, this is a he said/she said game, and a lawsuit like this is one of the only ways to be able to file the proper requests to search through the boxes and boxes of old records to get documentation one way or another as to who painted it.
- Retra 10y ago
  I don't see any reason why the court system should be used to resolve this kind of question. The value of a painting is entirely subjective, and if the person who painted it is used as a factor in the price, that is just a failing of the evaluator. If I priced a painting based on the weather in Guam in 1920, there shouldn't need to be a court ruling concerning attempts to figure out what the weather was like that year.
anjc 10y ago
> I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment But if you buy stock which explodes in value - even if you didn't expect its value to go up - you'd expect to be able to sell it at the market value as genuine stock, no?
icebraining 10y ago
The buyer still has exactly what they paid for, and nothing less. No, he has now a less credible work attributed to Doig. Credibility is worth money. I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment. You can if the stock was already worth 250000:1 and then the CEO made allegedly false claims that crashed the price.
- Zikes 10y ago
  Doig was a nobody at age 16, else the painting wouldn't have sold for $100. The buyer bought a nice-looking painting from some kid in a correctional facility, not a world-famous painter. There was no promise or expectation that it would significantly increase in value.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    The value at purchase time is irrelevant to this case, the same way the purchase price of stock is irrelevant to its current value when sold. If it is by Doig, it would have a current value >>> its value otherwise. If Doig says he didn't paint it when he did, he is directly destroying that difference in value.
    - Retra 10y ago
      He is only proving the invalidity of evaluating the price of a painting based on the name of the artist.
      - visarga 10y ago
        It's a painting. The value is in its esthetic, which has not degraded over the 40 years. Anyway, I think all damages should be capped at the original price point, 100$, even in the absurd case the judge sides with the buyer.
        icebraining 10y ago
        The value is in its esthetic The "intrinsic" value may be so, but the market value is whatever people are willing to pay for it, and that counts too.
dagw 10y ago
I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment. No, but if you bought stock in a tiny startup that later increase 250,000:1 you can sue the company if they claim that the stock you claim to own isn't valid any more. That was basically half the plot of that Facebook movie they made.
pbartlow 10y ago
Fletcher and I are suing Doig not for merely disavowing the painting. After a year of research and ridicule from Doig and his dealer, we put it in auction. They threatened lawsuit and killed the sale. Our complaint is for interference of business. He can't do that if he is the real artist. What he will owe us is what we would have gotten if he had stayed out of it. We have plenty of evidence and his behavior and character is quite consistent with what made him a guest of the Correctional Centre in the first place. Wait for the real story when the book comes out.

by Zikes 10y ago

Sanddancer 10y ago

That's not what this case is about. This is about who painted a work of art that could potentially be worth many millions of dollars. Peter Doig was living a pretty nomadic life at the time, and a lot of public records haven't been digitized due to time and cost. So at the moment, this is a he said/she said game, and a lawsuit like this is one of the only ways to be able to file the proper requests to search through the boxes and boxes of old records to get documentation one way or another as to who painted it.

Retra 10y ago
I don't see any reason why the court system should be used to resolve this kind of question. The value of a painting is entirely subjective, and if the person who painted it is used as a factor in the price, that is just a failing of the evaluator. If I priced a painting based on the weather in Guam in 1920, there shouldn't need to be a court ruling concerning attempts to figure out what the weather was like that year.

anjc 10y ago

> I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment But if you buy stock which explodes in value - even if you didn't expect its value to go up - you'd expect to be able to sell it at the market value as genuine stock, no?

icebraining 10y ago

The buyer still has exactly what they paid for, and nothing less. No, he has now a less credible work attributed to Doig. Credibility is worth money. I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment. You can if the stock was already worth 250000:1 and then the CEO made allegedly false claims that crashed the price.

Zikes 10y ago
Doig was a nobody at age 16, else the painting wouldn't have sold for $100. The buyer bought a nice-looking painting from some kid in a correctional facility, not a world-famous painter. There was no promise or expectation that it would significantly increase in value.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  The value at purchase time is irrelevant to this case, the same way the purchase price of stock is irrelevant to its current value when sold. If it is by Doig, it would have a current value >>> its value otherwise. If Doig says he didn't paint it when he did, he is directly destroying that difference in value.
  - Retra 10y ago
    He is only proving the invalidity of evaluating the price of a painting based on the name of the artist.
    - visarga 10y ago
      It's a painting. The value is in its esthetic, which has not degraded over the 40 years. Anyway, I think all damages should be capped at the original price point, 100$, even in the absurd case the judge sides with the buyer.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        The value is in its esthetic The "intrinsic" value may be so, but the market value is whatever people are willing to pay for it, and that counts too.

dagw 10y ago

I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment. No, but if you bought stock in a tiny startup that later increase 250,000:1 you can sue the company if they claim that the stock you claim to own isn't valid any more. That was basically half the plot of that Facebook movie they made.

pbartlow 10y ago

Fletcher and I are suing Doig not for merely disavowing the painting. After a year of research and ridicule from Doig and his dealer, we put it in auction. They threatened lawsuit and killed the sale. Our complaint is for interference of business. He can't do that if he is the real artist. What he will owe us is what we would have gotten if he had stayed out of it. We have plenty of evidence and his behavior and character is quite consistent with what made him a guest of the Correctional Centre in the first place. Wait for the real story when the book comes out.