The Four Color Media Monitor

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported a couple in Paoli won a lawsuit against a comics grading company that defamed them with false accusations:

Matt and Emily Meyers had become so good at restoring old comic books that they were accused by the world’s largest and most influential comic book company of falsifying their projects’ results. It led to such a sharp decrease in their business that the Paoli married couple decided to sue the company, Certified Guaranty Company, for defamation.

Amid accusations from the comic company that the Meyerses’ valuable rare comic books were fake — untrue rumors that they said were spread through their industry — the couple was in “survival mode,” said their attorney Lane Jubb Jr., putting their livelihoods at stake as they were forced to sell their restored comics below value and issue refunds to other comic book collectors.

But after an eight-year legal battle, a Philadelphia jury last month sided with the Meyerses, ordering the comic book evaluating giant to pay the couple $10 million, and rendering a verdict likely to reverberate throughout the hobby industry, comic aficionados say.

They're very lucky. I may not consider the speculator market a good example, if that's what their job is part of, but it was definitely wrong of CGC to defame and hurt their business because they believed the comics were phony. I wish them well going forward.

That said, the comics they're restoring should still go to a museum, and not be solely sold round and round the speculator market to people who likely will only keep them locked up in vaults, until they sell them to yet the next bidder at auction. Something CGC isn't improving by working in the collectible business, rather than the far better example of museum business. Wouldn't it be better if they transitioned to a company that helps museums archive these classic pamphlets instead?

Labels: history, sales