Press Release

On April 15, 2002, Alan Harvey of Sad Sack, Inc. abandoned all of Sad Sack's claims against Steve Geppi which had been sought in the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

Sad Sack, Inc., acting through Harvey, its President, had sued Geppi for certain post-1955 Sad Sack artwork, which it had claimed was wrongfully in Geppi's possession.

Geppi countered by stating that he had initially stored the disputed artwork in his warehouses as Harvey Publications was being evicted from its warehouse in Brooklyn, New York. In June of 1984, Geppi had purchased all pre-1955 Harvey artwork from Harvey Publications and, at Harvey's request, had moved all of the pre- and post- Harvey art to the warehouses in Baltimore. After several years of incurring this storage expense, Geppi entered into an agreement – in exchange for the storage costs – in 1992 with the subsequent purchaser of the Harvey Publication and Entertainment companies, Jeff Montgomery, for the post-1955 Harvey art, which may have included what few pieces of Sad Sack art remained in the collection.

The Supreme Court of the State of New York dismissed Sad Sack's claims against Geppi. Geppi had counterclaimed against Harvey for malicious defamation statements made on the Sad Sack website and this counterclaim, despite legal assault by Harvey's attorneys, remained pending at the time the agreement to settle was reached.

In the settlement agreement reached between the parties, Sad Sack and Alan Harvey have dismissed all of their appeals in exchange for Geppi's voluntary dismissal of his counterclaim. There has been no exchange of monies between the parties. Geppi continues in his ownership interest of the previously disputed artwork and his right of transfer of such artwork to others.

"It's great to be exonerated of all the charges Sad Sack made against me and against Geppi's Comic World," Geppi said. "It's not in my nature to be litigious, so I was more than happy to dismiss my counterclaim against Harvey and Sad Sack voluntarily. Frankly, I wish that this lawsuit had never happened.

"I want to go on record expressing my best wishes for Alan Harvey and the eventual success of Sad Sack," Geppi continued. "I stand ready to offer whatever assistance I can to help Harvey achieve that success within the comic book industry."