I have a pretty sordid story to tell, and I wonder if anyone could give me
some advice .....

I work with an all- volunteer group that runs a small museum and archive.
Recently, we received a letter saying that we (and our president) were being
sued by one of our patrons.   A while back, this patron signed a one-time
use agreement to print some of our photos in a book he was publishing. We
generously waived the use fee.  Later, we found out that he had given copies
of two of our images to a local hardware store, in order to promote the
book.  The president asked that the images be taken down from the  store, or
that the store owner (or the original patron) sign another use agreement and
pay the appropriate fee.

Then, we got a letter from the patron's lawyer, threatening to sue us with
libel. He said that, even through he had signed the one-time use agreement,
that the image was out of copyright and that we had no right to restrict its
use.   Moreover, we were hurting his good name in the community.  Finally,
the lawyer's letter said that we were hurting the cause of local history, by
restricting people's access to our collection.  (In reality, anyone who
wants to see the pictures can come into our archive and look at them -
either during open hours or after making an appointment.  For 50 cents, they
can even get a nice copy to take home.)

 I'm 99% sure that we are in the right, but there is one problem.... I was
supposed to write to the original patron after the president talked to the
hardware store owner, but I got busy with other things and let the letter
fall to the bottom of the stack of things to do- before I could get to it,
we got the letter from the lawyer. Obviously, I'm feeling pretty guilty now.

What do we do now? We are getting a lawyer ourselves, but I'd like to give
the lawyer some info about what museums usually do in this kind of case.

THANKS!

Katie Wadell

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