Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its visitors center/museum in Bentonville are suing a Fayetteville photography studio for images - mostly negatives - of historic Wal-Mart events, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his family that predate the founding of the company.
A complaint was filed March 28 in Benton County Circuit Court but has since been moved to federal court, an attorney involved with the lawsuit said Tuesday. The plaintiffs also include Crystal Lands LLC, a company registered with the Arkansas secretary of state’s office by North Little Rock attorney Ken Calhoon. It’s through Crystal Lands that the Walton family members are attempting to get the images back. Efforts Tuesday to contact Calhoon were unsuccessful.
Wal-Mart alleges that Bob’s Studio of Photography, founded by brothers Robert and David Huff, has about six file boxes of negatives, proofs and retouched photographic prints derived from photographs taken of the former Walmart Visitor’s Center (now the Walmart Museum), the original Wal-Mart board of directors and members of the Walton family - including some of the Waltons as children - and that all the images belong to Wal-Mart.
For years, Wal-Mart used Bob’s Studio to take photographs and restore older photographs, “including historical photos of Wal-Mart events and Walton family members,” the complaint states. “Throughout the relationship with the [plaintiffs], Bob’s retained some of the [plaintiffs’] negatives, proofs and prints as a courtesy to them.”
The Huff brothers are now gone, and Helen Huff, the widow of David Huff, is the managing agent for the studio. The lawsuit said she has put the studio up for sale. By possessing the images, she is keeping the family and Walton Museum from using them, the suit stated. The plaintiffs also are seeking a permanent injunction prohibiting the studio and Huff from distributing any of the images to a third party, destroying them, further withholding them or retaining any copies of the photos “determined by this court to belong to the owners.”
Huff said Tuesday that she believes she owns the copyright to the images in all forms.
“When a professional photographer clicks that shutter and the image is created, we own that as property,” she said. She recalled a specific instance where Sam Walton called on her husband to drive to Bentonville in the snow on Christmas 1950 to take a holiday photo of the Walton family on a couch.
A call to Rogers attorney Marshall Ney, who represents the plaintiffs, was not returned by deadline Tuesday.
“As you can imagine, many of the photos go back many years and commemorate the history, heritage and culture of our company,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Randy Hargrove. “We believe that some of the photos that Bob’s Studio has belong to Wal-Mart. All we want is for the court to make it clear who rightfully owns these photographs.”
Wal-Mart is not asking for money from the studio or Huff, only a decision on who owns the images.
“They have been bullying me and intimidating me for five years,” Helen Huff said. Her husband died in 2009.
“We have been working for years to resolve this without involving the courts,” Hargrove said. “We never wanted the issue to reach this point, and we’ve done everything possible to try to avoid this.”
Business, Pages 25 on 04/09/2014