State Street Global Advisors has settled its lawsuit with the sculptor of Wall Street’s Fearless Girl statue, who the bank sought to stop from selling replicas on the basis that doing so undermined its message promoting gender diversity in leadership.
State Street, which had commissioned the 50-inch bronze statue, said in a 2019 lawsuit that Kristen Visbal’s sale of Fearless Girl replicas also damaged the bank’s goodwill and infringed on its intellectual property rights.
The statue was placed in March 2017, shortly before International Women’s Day, across from Wall Street’s Charging Bull sculpture, which has been in place since 1989 as a symbol of American resilience following the stock market crash two years prior.
Fearless Girl was moved to stand in front of the New York Stock Exchange in 2018.
State Street and Visbal reached a settlement over the weekend following mediation. The settlement averted a trial that was set to start between the two parties this week. Its terms were not disclosed.
This puts an end to a legal matter that began when the bank sued Visbal in February 2019 in the Southern District of New York for allegedly breaching a contract when she sold replicas of the statue to a law firm in Australia, a hotel in Norway and a couple in Germany, and by allowing another replica to be used in a Women’s March against State Street’s wishes.
In a joint statement shared with Banking Dive, State Street and Visbal said, “The parties are proud of the dialogue and change that Fearless Girl has inspired over the past seven years.”
