Federal Court In Philadelphia Awards Damages To Community College Against Artist Who Failed To Deliver Promised Sculpture
January 31, 2024
By: Carl L. Engel
On January 29, 2024, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania entered a judgment in favor of the Community College of Philadelphia against an artist who had failed to install an artwork in breach of their contract. The court found that the College was entitled to restitution of $201,500 to recover installment payments that it had made to the artist for artwork that was never delivered.
In 2015, the College entered into a contract with Bannerworks, Inc., d/b/a Koryn Rolstad Studios (“KR Studios”), to design, fabricate, and install a work of public art on the College’s campus. The College agreed to pay KR Studios $275,000 for the artwork in periodic installments, and to construct the base on which the artwork would be placed. KR Studios was supposed to complete the project by June 30, 2017.
On May 24, 2018, the College and KR Studios amended their agreement to delay the completion date to August 31, 2018, because the site selected by the College required the studio to redesign the artwork. The amendment also increased the price of the artwork by $20,000 to $295,000.
On January 4, 2019, the parties amended their agreement a second time to again delay the completion date, based on KR Studios’s complaints that the College kept on revising the design drawings of the artwork. Under the second amendment, KR Studios was required to install the artwork “within thirty days of the full and final completion of the artwork’s base.”
The College hired a contractor to install a base for the artwork as agreed. By October 2019, KR Studios had begun ordering components for the artwork, but they were never delivered or installed.
On August 5, 2021, the College filed a lawsuit against KR Studios based on its alleged breach of their contract. On August 23, 2022, the parties agreed to a settlement agreement under which KR Studios would install the artwork by January 31, 2023.
On April 3, 2023, the College asked the court to reopen the lawsuit because the artwork still had not been installed and the latest deadline had expired. The court agreed and, on July 31, 2023, held a bench trial.
On January 29, 2024, the court entered its decision, finding that KR Studios had breached its agreement with the College, and the College was entitled to damages of $201,500, which is what it had already paid to KR Studios as installment payments for the artwork.
In determining the amount of damages owed to the College, the court observed that the College had not introduced evidence of what it would cost to hire someone else to install the artwork. Therefore, it could not prove its “expectation damages,” i.e., what it expected to receive from KR Studios under their contract. Instead, the College submitted evidence of its payments to KR Studios and the contractor that had constructed the base for the artwork, i.e., its “reliance damages.” However, the court found that reliance damages were inappropriate because the College still has the artwork base for which it paid the contractor, and KR Studios did perform part of the contract by making design drawings.
Therefore, the court awarded the College “restitution,” i.e., which is a doctrine that “requires the party in breach to disgorge the benefit received by returning it to the party who conferred it.” The College paid $284,000 to KR Studios for the artwork, and KR Studios had provided only design drawings worth $82,500. Therefore, the College was entitled to $201,500 in restitution.