Changes

The judge found Robert Bane Ltd., trading through the Tamara Bane Gallery and Exotica, guilty of breach of contract for failing to pay the $93,280 owed to Sorayama under the September 9, 2002 agreement. With interest up to August 27, 2007 (the date of the judgment), the total amount came to $148,949.68, but interest continues to accrue. <ref>''Sorayama v. Bane'', Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, p. 4.</ref>

The judge found Robert Bane Ltd., trading through the Tamara Bane Gallery and Exotica, guilty of breach of contract for failing to pay the $93,280 owed to Sorayama under the September 9, 2002 agreement. With interest up to August 27, 2007 (the date of the judgment), the total amount came to $148,949.68, but interest continues to accrue. <ref>''Sorayama v. Bane'', Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, p. 4.</ref>

==Conversion against Bane personally--

===Conversion against Bane personally===

The Court ruled that Bane personally committed the tort of conversion, a civil analog to theft, when he sold off 33 of Sorayama's paintings and then pretended that he didn’t know where they were while pocketing the money.<ref>As recounted above, of the 33, 24 were paintings which Bane claimed were in a warehouse or somewhere else. The remaining 9 were the works sold at full price but represented to Sorayama as a "bulk" sale at a discount.</ref>  Bane argued that there was no harm done because he was willing to pay Sorayama his share of the proceeds of sale, but the court correctly decided that the proper remedy was payment to Sorayama of the full value of the work, not just the artist's share. Because Bane was found to have acted in bad faith – willfully and maliciously, in fact – and not the result of honest mistake, allowing Bane to keep any part of the money he tried to keep for himself would have wrongly rewarded him for his misdeeds.<ref>''Sorayama v. Bane'', Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, p. 4; see also, ''In Re: Robert Bane'', Case No. LA07-19570-BB, Transcript of Proceeding, December 23, 2008, pp. 8-11.</ref>

The Court ruled that Bane personally committed the tort of conversion, a civil analog to theft, when he sold off 33 of Sorayama's paintings and then pretended that he didn’t know where they were while pocketing the money.<ref>As recounted above, of the 33, 24 were paintings which Bane claimed were in a warehouse or somewhere else. The remaining 9 were the works sold at full price but represented to Sorayama as a "bulk" sale at a discount.</ref>  Bane argued that there was no harm done because he was willing to pay Sorayama his share of the proceeds of sale, but the court correctly decided that the proper remedy was payment to Sorayama of the full value of the work, not just the artist's share. Because Bane was found to have acted in bad faith – willfully and maliciously, in fact – and not the result of honest mistake, allowing Bane to keep any part of the money he tried to keep for himself would have wrongly rewarded him for his misdeeds.<ref>''Sorayama v. Bane'', Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, p. 4; see also, ''In Re: Robert Bane'', Case No. LA07-19570-BB, Transcript of Proceeding, December 23, 2008, pp. 8-11.</ref>