The South Dakota Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday against Hill City sculptor Peggy Detmers in her appeal of a contract dispute with actor Kevin Costner.
Back in the early 1990s, riding high on the success of Dances with Wolves and the apparently positive experience he had shooting that film here in South Dakota, Costner planned to build a big Deadwood resort named for his movie character John Dunbar. He commissioned Detmers to sculpt fourteen buffalo and three Lakota riders for the Dunbar resort. Costner agreed that if the Dunbar didn't happen, he would make sure Detmers's seventeen sculptures were "agreeably displayed elsewhere." In 2003, after paying Detmers $300,000 for six years of work, Costner installed the sculptures on his Dunbar-dreamed property at the top of the hill north of Deadwood, just off Highway 85, in a tourist attraction called Tatanka.
Detmers attended the 2003 grand opening of Tatanka. She proudly displays the Tatanka installation on the front page of her website. But in 2008, she sued, saying that placing the statues on the site of the unrealized Dunbar resort violated the "elsewhere" clause of her contract with Costner. "Agreeable" to her meant a site where she could profit from lots of sales of copies of her sculptures. Tatanka has a visitor center and gift shop, but I'm guessing the facility doesn't do enough visible business for Detmers's taste.
Whatever the level of sales, the Supreme Court finds no dispute over the fact that Detmers agreed to the installation at Tatanka. Detmers could only appeal to the question of whether Costner's Dunbar site constitutes "elsewhere." Our justices hold that "elsewhere" in this contract means anywhere but the Dunbar resort. The contract refers specifically to the Dunbar, not the Dunbar site. The Dunbar resort does not exist; therefore, anywhere, including the Dunbar site, is elsewhere.
Costner says to this day he'd still like to build the resort.
We call it, "The UnDunbar."
I played poker with Costner back when Mike O'Connell was alive and ran the Dakota Territory Saloon. Kevin said he learned that building white casinos in He Sapa is blasphemous and heretical.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-giago/doris-leader-charge_b_1394870.html
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/mike-o-connell-old-deadwood-disappeared-the-day-mike-died/article_8a188bd8-c83c-11de-a03f-001cc4c03286.html
In depositions and many newspaper articles, and for many years to me personally, Costner called Tatanka the TEMPORARY display of my work, not the PERMANENT display, so I never agreed to a permanent display of my work elsewhere. I gave him a $750,000 discount off my wholesale price for him to put the work at a luxury resort where the sale of miniatures of fine art would occur. It never happened. He changed his story once in the courtroom when he realized the truth supported my position. The judges chose to believe Costner's second story, despite us pointing out his depositions and the story he told the papers for years corroborated my testimony which never changed. I guess it is how much money a person has that sways the judges here in SD as much as elsewhere here in the USA.