Page & Palette bookstore owner Karin Wolff Wilson has brought a $1.5-million lawsuit against the convention center and production company that hosted her store’s May 1 event with bestselling cookbook author Paula Deen.
When attendance for the event outgrew its original offsite venue, Wilson, whose 39-year-old bookstore is located in Fairhope, Ala., checked out larger places before settling on the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center, which would hold four times the number of people than the original location.
“When I checked out the convention center, my main concern was sound reverberation in the large arena,” said Wilson. “I knew the sound quality had to be good since this event was going to be an interview and q&a with Paula Deen. They said that when it fills up, it won’t sound like that. I found Mike Dorsett to do the sound, and the convention center people assured me that he’d done events there before and would do a good job.” Page & Palette hired Dorsett to provide the sound and lighting systems and video screens for the event. Dorsett’s company, Dorsett Productions Unlimited, is the co-defendant in Wilson’s lawsuit.
More than 4,000 people paid $65 each to attend the Deen visit. “It was the biggest event we’d ever done,” said Wilson. “We knew it would be the hit of the year and it surpassed my expectations.” The ticket price covered the event, a copy of Deen's new biography and hors d'oeuvres from her cookbooks. Page & Palette ended up selling 4,300 copies of Deen’s memoir, Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin' (Simon & Schuster).
According to Wilson, trouble began early on, when the lighting in the arena was so dark that people couldn’t find their way to their seats. “We ended up turning up the lights so bright in the audience that it looked like a giant Wal-Mart,” said Wilson. Once Deen was brought out to be interviewed, the sound system echo had Deen turning to the audience and asking, “Can you hear me?”
Wilson also alleges that the two giant screens that were to project Deen’s image to the audience were fuzzy and out of focus.
“People were leaving because they couldn’t hear the event,” said Wilson. “A lot of people totally enjoyed themselves, but I’m trying to do a top-notch event and when I hire the best people and they don’t work with me, it reflects badly on my bookstore."
Customers didn’t ask the bookstore for refunds. In fact, the only refunds were given were to those who had purchased tickets before the venue charged to a location further away. Wilson said that 50 or 60 customers had returned their tickets, and those tickets were snapped up by other customers.
In the lawsuit, Page & Palette demands $501,000 from the Convention Center and $500,000 each from Dorsett Productions and SMG, the Philadelphia-based company that operates the center. The suit alleges that Page & Palette’s name and reputation were “once and forever damaged” by the poor presentation and that it will suffer a loss of future profits.
“The purpose of filing this lawsuit was twofold,” said Page & Pallete’s attorney A.J. Cooper, of CooperLaw. “The first was defensive because Dorsett Productions was threatened to sue my client.” Cooper said Dorsett “had been paid half of what had been agreed upon. And based upon his work, he didn’t deserve that much.”
“The second reason was that Page & Pallete has a great and well-deserved reputation for being able to bring world-class authors to this area. Page & Pallete got a great degree of criticism for this event. Dorsett Productions was hired because Page & Pallete wanted to make sure this production was first class. They spent money to assure that.”
“It’s particularly galling when someone has gone the extra mile for a first-class event and then Page & Pallete takes the blame for the event not being as good as it should have been,” said Cooper. “No one would say Dorsett Productions screwed up, they say Page & Pallete screwed up. We think this lawsuit sends a signal to contractors to not take advantage of booksellers who don’t do events like this on a regular basis.”
“We spent a ton of money on this event,” said Wilson. “We hired a band; had a professional create the barnyard setting on stage; hired a catering service to provide the hors d'oeuvres; and paid to have a shuttle bring people from the parking area of the Civic Center a half-mile away to the convention center. I want my customers to know that I take this seriously.”
PW's calls to Mike Dorsett of Dorsett Productions Unlimited and Bob Brazier, executive director of the convention center, were not returned by press time.
