The legal dispute between a California man who says a box of glass-plate negatives he bought at a garage sale are the work of Ansel Adams and the famed photographer’s trust has entered a new phase.
On Thursday, the man, Rick Norsigian, and PRS Media Partners filed a counterclaim against the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust in federal court in San Francisco. The trust, which disputes that the images are Adams’s work, filed suit against Mr. Norsigian and others in August, asserting that their sale of prints made from the negatives was a trademark violation.
Now Mr. Norsigian argues in his countersuit that the trust slandered him and engaged in a civil conspiracy. The slander case arises from comments made by William Turnage, the managing trustee, who told CNN that the authentication effort was the work of “a bunch of crooks” and likened it to the “big lie” technique of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. The suit also contends that e-mails between Mr. Turnage and the Center for Creative Photography, the Adams photo archive at the University of Arizona, depict him as objecting to the center’s neutral stance in the dispute, which it eventually reversed with a statement.
Mr. Norsigian’s lawyer contends the statement by the center, which is not a defendant, “diminished the value” of the find. Bob Steinberg, a lawyer for the trust, told The Bay Citizen that he viewed the counterclaim as a sideshow. “We will show these statements by Bill Turnage did not influence the C.C.P.,” he said.
The Norsigian prints, priced at $1,500 and $7,500, were still being sold on Friday.
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