After POLO Magazine lost its court battle with Polo Ralph Lauren last month, it seemed the rich would have to struggle on once more without instruction on jewel mining, truffle farming, the manufacture of single-malt scotch or how to hire a good private chef.
What ever would they do?
To those readers shivering at the prospect, the message from lawyer Tom Godbold was, fear not. POLO Magazine intends to fight the power. Though vigorous appeals are considered bad form in the game of polo, Godbold promised vigorous appeals. The magazine had been granted the right to continue publishing until all appeals are exhausted, and had never shut down, he said. In fact, Godbold said last week, “They’re over there working on the September issue right now.”
This was a peculiar thing for one to hear, having called Godbold only because there was no answer at the magazine’s office, except from a machine, which referred all inquiries to Godbold. A subsequent call to publisher John Goodman was also referred to Godbold, who quickly dispatched a letter declaring such calls to be harassment. “In light of your last article attacking Westchester and POLO Magazine [“The Patrón,” November 19, 1998], you are instructed not to contact any Westchester employee,” Godbold wrote. And if the Press should print that POLO was ” ‘closed’ or ‘out of business,’ ” this would be false and defamatory, and legal action would follow.
Godbold and his client were clearly not people to be trifled with; let us henceforth refer to them as Mr. Godbold and Mr. Goodman. We would not have dared disobey Mr. Godbold’s instructions, but by the time we received them, we had already spoken with Westchester employee Chris Kelly. Ms. Kelly (these are all very important people) informed us that she no longer considered herself a Westchester employee. She had been the editor of POLO, but her work on the September issue was completed by the time of the ruling. As she put it, the magazine “suspended operations” in mid-August, when all editorial employees were told to go home.
Ms. Kelly could not explain Mr. Godbold’s confusion on this point, except perhaps as a bout of sentimentality: “I think Tom feels as we all do — that in some sense, we’ll always be working for POLO Magazine.”
The magazine becomes another casualty in Lauren’s fierce battle to protect his trademark. Among other targets has been the U.S. Polo Association, which Lauren sued 20 years ago when the USPA tried to market clothes. He has also sued polo clubs, and two years ago, his lawyers even took the time to sue a little topless bar in Houston, which called itself The Polo Club. At about the time POLO Magazine “suspended operations,” there was an item in the New York Post concerning yet another potential court foe. The Bridgehampton Polo Club had published a magazine called Bridgehampton Polo, with the word “Polo” in a typeface similar to Lauren’s logo and a cover photo of Sylvester Stallone in the classic Polo Ralph Lauren pose. Quoting a source at Ralph Lauren, the Post reported that the company would probably not sue the magazine, “because so many wealthy, influential Hamptonites are connected with it.” This, if true, was a concession to privilege that Houston’s polo elite apparently did not rate.
Mr. Goodman’s father made a fortune with Goodman Manufacturing, now the largest maker of air-conditioning equipment in the United States. His living secured, Mr. Goodman the younger has freely passed his days as a “polo-holic.” Until last spring, when he abruptly fired Memo Gracida, one of the game’s greatest players, Mr. Goodman was the owner of the world’s top-ranked polo team. He is also a player on this team, and while it may be true that Mr. Goodman looks ridiculous playing beside world-class players, few people are willing to tell him so. Mr. Goodman gives money to polo causes, sits on important polo committees and is likely to own the polo field he plays on. In an earlier interview, he said he would never have bought the magazine had he known the court battle would follow. It is conceivable that his advisers never warned him. At any rate, it was odd what a businessman of Mr. Goodman’s stature claimed not to know before making the purchase.
Before the magazine had even published an issue, the cease-and-desist letter arrived from Lauren. POLO Magazine was the first to go to court, seeking to shore up its right to publish. Lauren’s lawyers countersued for trademark infringement, and until the trial, the magazine was allowed to continue, but only with a disclaimer denying affiliation to Polo Ralph Lauren.
In the back of POLO Magazine, there were always several pages devoted to the game of polo, but the rest was spent on lifestyle. POLO never had much to say; the idea was to look good. Aside from articles about caviar and such, the magazine was known for its fashion layouts. The first issue featured Claudia Schiffer on the cover. Another layout showed a fashionable fellow shutting the trunk of a fine car on the legs of an apparently dead woman. When a reader complained, the magazine reprinted the photo, captioned, “Put a lid on it.”
Goodman himself was never quiet as a publisher. He knew nothing about the business but followed his instincts, assigning stories about his friends and pleading with friends to advertise. Last year, wishing to be closer to his project, he abruptly moved the magazine’s offices from Dallas to Houston. Most of the editorial staff stayed behind. The new editor was the happy-go-lucky Ms. Kelly, late of Houston Metropolitan. Ms. Kelly said at the time that she would never disagree with Mr. Goodman. “Disagree would imply that someone was digging in their heels,” she said, “and we don’t do that. We throw ideas around.”
And they were building something beautiful together when again Lauren’s lawyers came to town. The trial was not in the least a glamorous affair. The lawyers entered the courtroom four on each side, just like a polo match. Ralph’s men looked as though they were chums from the streets of Brooklyn, where Lauren had grown up as Lifshitz, the son of a housepainter. They were fat, pale and rumpled and looked rather mean. Across the aisle, contrarily, sat Mr. Godbold, pressed and polished, with the hair of Buddy Holly and the lips of Elvis. In his closet were a pair of Polo Ralph Lauren shoes, and he clearly would have made the better Polo model.
As the case evolved, it became, like Goodman’s polo playing, a matter of denying the obvious. Lauren’s lawyers insisted they weren’t “these materialists who go around stamping out dissent,” which is exactly what they were. Mr. Godbold, on the other hand, maintained that the heads of POLO Magazine had never even considered profiting on Polo Ralph Lauren. Ralph’s men begged to differ.
“Your honor, I won’t burden the court with all the contradictions and credibility issues,” said Lauren lawyer Les Fagen. And then he burdened the court with credibility issues: how POLO Magazine had maintained that hiring Claudia Schiffer, a top Lauren model, was merely a coincidence, as was distributing the first issue with the catalog of Neiman-Marcus, Lauren’s largest retailer. Documents requested by Polo Ralph Lauren were produced late or never at all. The key piece of evidence, a letter from one Ami Shinitzky, Lauren’s lawyers had found for themselves. The letter offered to sell Goodman a small equestrian magazine whose real value, Shinitzky wrote, is in its trademark for an “equestrian sports and lifestyle magazine” by the name of Polo. “Ralph Lauren’s spectacular achievement with the name Polo,” as Shinitzky wrote, “has helped cement the unmistakable association of the name Polo with lifestyle.”
Goodman claimed in court that he never saw Shinitzky’s letter before his purchase. He paid Shinitzky $400,000 for Polo Magazine, or about $800 per subscriber. The magazine was renamed Polo Players Edition, and Goodman soon began publishing another magazine under the trademark, which was POLO. He liked to say that POLO was the official pub\lication of the U.S. Polo Association, but Lauren’s lawyers managed to dig up a sales letter from POLO‘s ad director, who wrote that the magazine “is not about the sport, but rather about an adventurous approach to living life.”
By the time the lawyers quit talking, the case file had grown to some 50-odd volumes. After an “exhaustive” review that took seven months, Magistrate Judge Mary Milloy ruled that the official publication of the U.S. Polo Association was indeed trying to profit on a lifestyle image created by the shirtmaker. The judge came to a “harsh but unavoidable conclusion”: POLO Magazine must die. “That Westchester has expended large sums in pursuit of its new venture is obvious,” the judge wrote, “and the disappointment to its new owner is inevitable.” On the other hand, POLO had proceeded without a clear right to do so.
In the aftermath, Mr. Godbold obviously had much work to do, but what would become of the magazine’s staff? “Let’s just say, ‘I’m going to New York,’ ” said Ms. Kelly. And what of Mr. Goodman, the patrón? In July he replaced the chairman of the board, the president and the CEO of Goodman Manufacturing with himself. If that doesn’t keep Mr. Goodman busy, perhaps he’ll buy something. Last year, his eye fell, however briefly, on the Houston Press. Perhaps he would become our new publisher. “But first,” he said then, “I’ve got to see if I’m, you know, full of hot air.”
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This article appears in Sep 9-15, 1999.