The Academy has struggled to keep statuettes off the market in the past.
Photo: storypick.com

A Los Angeles judge has ruled that an Oscar statuette which was sold last year for $79,000 may be bought back by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for only $10.

In her ruling, Judge Gail Ruderman Feuer cited a 1951 Academy bylaw that states that Oscar winners or their heirs must give the Academy first right of purchase for a fixed sum of $10 before being allowed to sell the statuettes on the open market.

According to the BBC, the golden trophy at the center of the dispute was awarded to Joseph C. Wright in 1942 for the filmmaker’s color art direction in the Hollywood film My Gal Sal.

Wright’s nephew Joseph Tutalo sold the statuette at auction through the Hollywood Auction House Nate D. Sanders, which specializes in the sale of movie memorabilia.

The statuette in question was awarded to filmmaker Joseph C. Wright in 1942.
Photo: Briarbrook Auctions/The Associated Press via news.nationalpost.com

Tutalo argued that the sale did not contravene the Academy rules because the bylaw prohibiting the sale of the award was introduced eight years after his uncle had won the award.

However, the judge dismissed the defense on the grounds that Wright remained a member of the organization when the bylaw was passed, the Guardian reports.

The Academy’s CEO Dawn Hudson said in a statement that the prestigious trophy was “never intended…to be treated as an article of trade.”

She added that the “sale would diminish the value of the Academy’s Award of Merit, signified by the Oscar statuette,” and that the award would be “diminished by distribution…through commercial efforts rather than in recognition of creative effort.”

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