NOTE: Just the oddest, stupidest story and another example (supplementing Watergate where all those lawyers were sent to jail) illustrating why lawyers are held in generally low regard.
Without belaboring the matter, I should mention that after Caroline and I were married, our wedding photographer unexpectedly disappeared for about six months, causing my parents consternation, which trickled down on us since it was Caroline who had engaged him. He was a very good photographer, who had previously published a book of images of Elvis Presley impersonators. Once we caught up with him, he was semi-chagrined, but everyone was happy with his work. That being said, the wedding itself was a pretty tense affair and the pictures (for us at least) captured that much too memorably, so we dispersed copies to interested parties, retaining none for ourselves. I cannot imagine restaging either that particular ceremony or re-engaging our photographer. I would, however, re-marry my wife and celebrate this publicly any number of times (we've already done this once on the beach in Cabo San Lucas, which was splendid), varying the guest list a bit and missing terribly certain dearly departed souls.
Dan Fried, an owner of H & H Photographers, called ademand for $48,000 to recreate a wedding “an abuse of the legal system.”
By: JOSEPH BERGER
Of all the many things that make up a wedding, few are moreimportant than the photographs.
Long after the last of the cake has grown stale and the tossed bouquet haswilted, the photos endure, stirring memories and providing vivid proof that theday of one’s dreams took place.
So it is not particularly surprising that one groom, disappointed with hiswedding photos, decided to sue.
The photographers had missed the last dance andthe bouquet toss, the groom, Todd J. Remis of Manhattan, said.
But what is striking, said the studio that took the pictures, is that Mr.Remis’s wedding took place in 2003 and he waited six years to sue. And not onlyhas Mr. Remis demanded to be repaid the $4,100 cost of the photography, he alsowants $48,000 to recreate the entire wedding and fly the principals to New Yorkso the celebration can be re-shot by another photographer.
Re-enacting the wedding may pose a particular challenge, the studio pointedout, because the couple divorced and the bride is believed to have moved backto her native Latvia.
Although Justice Doris Ling-Cohan of State Supreme Court in Manhattandismissed most of the grounds for the lawsuit, like the “infliction ofemotional distress,” she has allowed the case to proceed to determine whetherthere was indeed a breach of contract. But she displayed a good deal ofamusement about the lawsuit’s purpose in an opinion in January that quotedlyrics from the Barbra Streisand classic “The Way We Were.”
“This is a case in which it appearsthat the ‘misty watercolor memories’ and the ‘scattered pictures of the smiles... left behind’ at the wedding were more important than the real thing,” thejudge wrote. “Although the marriage did not last, plaintiff’s fury over thequality of the photographs and video continued on.”
'Unacceptable' pictures
Mr. Remis is suing H & HPhotographers, a 65-year-old studio known fondly among thousands of former andcurrent Bronx residents because it chronicled their weddings, bar mitzvahs andcommunions.
One of the two founders, Curt Fried,escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna in September 1939 as a 15-year-old and was draftedinto the United States Army, where he learned to shoot pictures assistingcameramen along the legendary Burma Road supply line to China during World WarII. Mr. Fried recalled that in the late 1940s, Arthur Fellig, the celebratedstreet photographer known as Weegee, twice sought work at the studio when heneeded money, but was turned down because he did not own a suit. (N.b. Weegee detail bolded by me because it's so interesting.)
In November 2003, Mr. Remis, anequity research analyst, and his fiancée, Milena Grzibovska, stepped into the H& H studio, which was then in Riverdale, met with Mr. Fried and signed acontract to have photographs and videotape taken of their wedding the nextmonth — on Dec. 28 — for $4,100.
It was a small party, with fewerthan 40 guests, at Castle on the Hudson in Tarrytown. Photographs show acheerful bride and groom surrounded by delighted relatives, including Ms.Grzibovska’s mother, Irina, and her sister Alina, who traveled from Latvia.
But a month after the wedding, whenMr. Remis returned to the studio to look over the proofs, he complained thatthe three-person crew had missed the last 15 minutes — the last dance and thebouquet toss. He noted in a deposition last July that the employees at H &H did not respond in a courtly fashion.
“I remember being yelled at morethan I have ever been yelled at before,” Mr. Remis said.
In his lawsuit, he also complainedthat the photographs were “unacceptable as to color, lighting, poses,positioning” and that a video, which he had expected to record the wedding’ssix hours, was only two hours long.
“I need to have the weddingrecreated exactly as it was so that the remaining 15 percent of the weddingthat was not shot can be shot,” he testified.
Mr. Fried, now 87, chuckles at thisidea: “He wants to fly his ex-wife back and he doesn’t even know where shelives.”
Mr. Remis, who said at hisdeposition that he has not been employed since 2008, and his lawyer, FrederickR. McGowen, did not return messages left on their phones. Ms. Grzibovska didnot respond to a message left through her Facebook page. The next court hearingis scheduled for Thursday.
Mr. Fried said Mr. Remis left thestudio in 2004 with 400 proofs — essentially small photographs used forselecting a few dozen photographs for the album; Mr. Remis claims “the officekept everything.” But a 2004 magazine published by Mr. Remis’s alma mater,Bowdoin College, which is also online, displays a photograph of the bride andgroom in a feature on alumni weddings. Mr. Fried said it was a photograph hisfirm took.
'Abuse of the legal system'?
The couple separated around 2008 andtheir divorce, which Mr. Remis contends was amicable, was finalized in 2010.Mr. Remis sued in 2009, just before the statute of limitation was about toexpire, according to Mr. Fried.
Mr. Remis testified that he wantedphotographs of the wedding, even if it ended in divorce and even if Mr. Friedcontended he already had them.
“It was unfortunate in itscircumstances,” he said, “but we are very much happy with the wedding event andwe would like to have it documented for eternity, for us and our families.”
Mr. Fried retired in 2004 and turnedhis half of the business over to his son Dan, who now operates the studio withLawrence Gillet, a son of the other founder, from a loft in Irvington, inWestchester County.
Dan Fried said that the costs ofdefending the lawsuit had already matched the amount sought by Mr. Remis andthat it was hurting his business’s bottom line. He said the case was “an abuseof the legal system.”
Mr. Remis’s lawyer works for GoodwinProcter, where Mr. Remis’s father, Shepard M. Remis, is a litigation partner.The younger Mr. Remis has testified that he is paying his lawyer himself.
Curt and Dan Fried are paying theirlawyer, Peter Wessel, themselves, they said, and the costs — $50,000 — the timethe suit has taken and the distress have taken a toll.
“I had a good life, thank God,” CurtFried said, “and at the end of my life this hits me in the face.”
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