Indeed he does claim this, although it is noted in some articles that his parents were payed $200. Given that it was a studio shoot & $200 changed hands one would have a pretty creditable argument that a verbal contract existed, although since a professional photographer was involved chances are much higher that an actual written contract existed.
If the defendants have that written contract and can prove that the $200 changed hands (for example if it was via a check and the bank has records that it was cashed) that part of the case would be pretty solidly refuted.
If the $200 was cash (and frequently that kind of payment is at least partly in cash because you can wriggle out of a contract if you take payment as a check and never cash it) at this point it is somewhat harder to prove (nobody would have video’ed it and/or that video would be lost to the mists of time). However if there is still a paper contract it would be pretty compelling to argue that if the parents never got the $200 they would have sued long long ago.
Yep.
Yep, five, ten, twenty+ years is a long time for a human to keep a consistent view on things.
Yep. It can be argued, but it would be a tough position. Mostly amounting to “I never got paid!” and hoping no record of the actual payment existed. On some rare occasions contracts have been held void because while compensation was involved a court has decided it “wasn’t enough”, that is part of why some companies pay employees far more then $1 to assign patent rights on inventions (even though their employment contract generally says the employer owns all that stuff).
It would be hard to argue $200 wasn’t enough in that era for a baby photoshoot, but one could try. Maybe with the “right” jury you might win. Or (again) if records of the payment can’t be found/verifyed the long shot is an adequate justification for it not having been felt with more like 30 years ago.
