Summary: The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences doesn’t want Whitney Houston to sell her Emmy award.
Whitney Houston’s Emmy Award needs its own bodyguard. The gold statuette is the centerpiece of a legal war between the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and Heritage Auctions.
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Houston’s family wanted to auction her 30-year-old award and asked Heritage Auctions to perform the task for them. But the Academy who gives out Emmys said that they are entitled to those statues and that the award must contractually be returned to them. They filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles to get back the award.
TMZ reported that the Academy includes a sticker on the bottom of every statuette produced between 1978 to 1994 that states the awards are their property. They said that all winners are obligated to return the award upon their death instead of selling it or throwing it away.
Houston received her award in 1986 for her Grammy ceremony performance of “Saving All My Love for You.” In 2012, the beloved singer and star of The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale was found dead in her hotel room in Beverly Hills.
The Houston family said that the Academy is picking on them. They cited numerous other Emmys being sold without any complaint, although those auctions were probably lower-profile than this one—which is set for Friday and already expected to bring in over $10,000.
The Academy wants a temporary restraining order to stop the sale as well as unspecified damages. It all sounds like an awful lot of trouble for the Houston family for just a $10,000 payday.
Do you think the Academy should get the Emmy back or should the Houston family be allowed to sell it? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: TMZ
Photo courtesy of Billboard