Judge Grants All Concerned in Three Gee's Bend Cases an Additional 45 Days

United States Magistrate Judge Bert W. Milling, Jr. granted the request for an additional 45 days for all parties in the three Gee's Bend lawsuits by Annie Mae Young, Loretta Pettway, and Lucinda Pettway Franklin to continue to talk. The parties have until, no later than June 9, 2008, to "immediately notify the Court if any of these actions settled."

In related news, let's go back to April 14, 2008. The Gee's Bend Foundation filed a motion to intervene as a defendant in the cases of Loretta Pettway and Annie Mae Young. The purpose was to "adjudicate its liability, if any." From reading the publicly available court filings, the argument is that: 1) the suits by Mrs. Young and Mrs. Pettway "center around purported wrongdoing... dealing with the display and licensing of certain quilt images owned by" the women; 2) the two quilters seek to enforce their copyrights; 3) the "Foundation has received monies from TVI from these purportedly unauthorized licenses (TVI refers to one of the defendants, Tinwood Ventures, Inc.). The Foundations is looking to "prevent exposure to double liability." Chief US District Judge Callie V. S. Grande has indicated the motion will be granted unless any objections are filed by April 28.

As mentioned before, you can follow the Gee's Bend suits yourself by reading the actual court filings. As mentioned in previous posts, PACER - "Public Access to Court Electronic Records ... an electronic public access service allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet." There's a fee of about 8 cents per page to access the records.