COURTESY USBR.GOV
On Monday in Las Vegas, the U.S. District Judge George Foley Jr. ordered that Bert Hansen–the owner of the High Scaler Cafe, which used to be called, awesomely, the Hoover Dam Snacketeria–pay out the artist Steven Liguori (along with his company, the Bruno Liguori Turquoise Trading Post) a total of $2,180,573.01 for violating a licensing agreement and copyrights, Courthouse News Service reports today.
The judgment stems from an April 2010 lawsuit in which Liguori states that most of the promised compensation for the two large-scale sculptures he created for Hansen (a 1995 work depicting a worker on Hoover Dam and a 1998 piece that serves as a monument to the High Scaler Cafe) were hinged around a royalty fee (17 percent) for all licensed products based around the artist’s work.
In the suit, Liguori argues that Hansen went “far beyond the licensed purposes,” in his exploitation of the artworks and additionally “refused to fulfill their obligations under the license agreement,” which includes unpaid royalties.
The judge ordered that Foley pay $1,350,000 in addition to a prejudgment interest of $830,573 and costs.