{"id":1183,"date":"2014-01-19T19:49:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T00:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/?p=1183"},"modified":"2014-05-06T11:09:28","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T15:09:28","slug":"location-booby-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/?p=1183","title":{"rendered":"Location Booby Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s another high profile example of why we preach that obtaining property and location agreements is a wise practice.\u00a0Photographer Allen Henson has been working on a photo project featuring topless women in public places. The New York Daily News and countless other media outlets have covered his exploits for obvious reasons – puns intended.
\nOn August 9, 20013, Mr. Henson took to the world famous observation deck of the iconic Empire State Building to photograph a topless female model. \u00a0While tourists of all ages presumably enjoyed countless views, there was one view they didn\u2019t expect as Mr. Henson snapped away laboring on his self described art project.<\/p>\n

The Daily News article can be read here.<\/a><\/p>\n

CBSnews.com had a short article linked here<\/a>, with a great quote where said \u201cHenson says the view from atop the building is so breathtaking he didn’t think anyone noticed.\u201d Yeah, right.<\/p>\n

The Empire State Building, LLC gave Mr. Henson a booby prize for his actions in the form of a lawsuit. According to the Complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court, New York County, Mr. Henson neither sought nor obtained the consent of the owners of this premier tourist destination to use its premises. Tourists were standing just a few feet from the model while she was posing.<\/p>\n

We are not a bit surprised that The Empire State Building sued Mr. Henson seeking among other things, compensatory and punitive damages (a\/k\/a money) from the photographer. \u00a0The formal complaint references well published building rules for use by photographers and alleges that the defendant engaged in impermissible and objectionable conduct on private property. \u00a0There are allegations of trespassing and that the shoot generated negative publicity and caused a loss of business for this family attraction.<\/p>\n

We are not predicting what the outcome of this legal case will be. \u00a0We have no position on who is right or wrong. \u00a0Rather we point out that Mr. Henson will likely need to\u00a0at least<\/i>, retain and pay legal counsel and risk suffering a judgment against him for money damages. \u00a0The extent of his financial loss – if any – is as yet unknown. This could all have been avoided by obtaining a property or location agreement from the owners of the Empire State Building. Likely such agreement would never have been granted in\u00a0this case.<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b>Note that most location shoots do not include objectionable or controversial photography and that landowners\u00a0generally<\/b>\u00a0have the right to regulate and control the activities and persons on their property. \u00a0A clearly written release permits the photographer to sleep at night and not have to worry about paying a lawyer – or worse – a money judgment. Remember this real life incident the next time some wannabe lawyer opines on the web that property or location agreements are “not legally required”.\u00a0Betcha none of those experts will be financially assisting Mr. Henson in this litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s another high profile example of why we preach that obtaining property and location agreements is a wise practice.\u00a0Photographer Allen Henson has been working on a photo project featuring topless women in public places. The New York Daily News and countless other media outlets have covered his exploits for obvious reasons – puns intended. On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,100,15,5,4,20],"tags":[297,298,294,245,295,296],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-be-aware","category-in-the-news","category-legal","category-paperwork","category-releases","category-stuff-you-should-know","tag-art-project","tag-compensatory-and-punitive-damages","tag-empire-state-building","tag-location-release","tag-photographer-allen-henson","tag-topless-model"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1186,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/1186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}