The Winston Cup Museum in Winston Salem, North Carolina will shut down for good on Saturday after a prolonged legal battle with the current rights holders of the Winston cigarette branding but now that company wants the curator held in legal contempt.
Will Spencer, who operates the NASCAR museum alongside a litany of other businesses in Winston Salem, revealed that he would shutter the Winston Cup Museum last month following months of expensive legal back-and-forths with ITG Brands LLC.
A motion was filed on Friday requesting that a North Carolina business court find Spencer guilty of criminal and civil contempt for reposting a YouTube video that covered the closure. The source material video from Youtuber Mitchell Stapleton was described by ITG as “disparaging and defamatory.”
Spencer posted the video to the Winston Cup Museum Facebook page on Dec. 1 but it was removed by Monday with Spencer saying he did so to show “good faith to show we did not know we were in violation of the court order.”
Spencer could be sentenced to up to 30 days in jail and fined up to $500 if found in criminal contempt. He could be sentenced from 90 days to a year in jail if the subject matter is not purged.
“Considering the egregious nature of the misconduct, even if defendants remove the offending video and publish a retraction, Will Spencer should be held in criminal contempt as punishment for his willful actions,” ITG said in the motion.
Why narrative in video is being questioned
In the video, over a narration, Stapleton says, “Maybe you’ve seen the stuff about the lawsuits surrounding it; the questionable at best United States judicial system has allowed a large company to bully this guy into closing his museum.”
That is the sort of narrative that IHG Brands took exception to in filing the motion for contempt.
“Mr. Spencer and the museum plainly encouraged and aided the interviewer in his disparagement of ITG, in further violation of the judgment, by participating in and promoting the video, and then celebrating the video on the Winston Cup Museum Facebook page.”
“Throughout the course of this litigation, and especially after ITG filed its motion for preliminary injunction, Will Spencer made multiple false statements to the media to make himself out as the victim and ITG as the bully.”
“More broadly, the narrative that Mr. Spencer is the victim of anything other than his own greed is not true.”
ITG has filed three lawsuits over the matter, two of which were dismissed, in arguing that ITG controls all IPs associated with the Winston brand. Spencer has contested that it does not control items surrounding the Winston Sports Marketing activations, including those spend on NASCAR’s premier series from 1971 to 2003.
The third lawsuit appeared to reach a settlement to rename before the end of the year.
Reasons behind the closure of NASCAR history museum
The museum was set to be renamed the Ralph Seagraves Memorial Museum in memory of the RJR marketing chief in charge of the Winston Cup sponsorship over the course of its tenure. Seagraves was awarded the NASCAR Landmark Award for outstanding contributions to the sport in 2021.
The decision to close instead came suddenly and without clear explanation.
ITG Brands argues that “given defendants’ prior conduct, ITG knew that Mr. Spencer could not be trusted. Thus, ITG requested, as a condition of settlement, that defendants’ agreements be entered as an order of the court punishable by contempt. As expected, Mr. Spencer has now failed to honor his word.”
The museum, which has operated in Winston Salem since 2005, chronicles an important era in the history of NASCAR. It is not affiliated with NASCAR either but has been a popular place for historians and industry notables to gather over the years.
It is own to numerous era appropriate cars, fire suits and countless other types of memorabilia.
After shutting down on Saturday, those items will be auctioned off at the Mecum automotive auction in Florida in January.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.