As if having 12,640 of your slides go missing is not quite cruel enough, a judge has ruled that the cost of this loss to photographer Chris Usher will be just $7 a slide, as reported by Bohemian.

The photographer has lost his appeal against the Corbis Corporation following a seven-year-long battle after they misplaced Usher’s images. Included in the lost slide are photographs of George W Bush and Al Gore during the campaign for the 2000 US Presidential race and the farce at the Supreme Court that followed, as well as a host of other significant global news stories.

The judge involved decided to value the images as a whole at $7 each, rather than consider some images will differ in value, and be worth thousands of dollars in some cases.

What is causing disquiet among photographers is that the ruling could potentially be setting a dangerous precedent for any similar cases in the future.

Any photographic agencies or publishers could theoretically be as careless as they please with clients’ images without any consequence. 't will be cheaper for them to trash them then returning them to you,' as Rob Haggart of A Photo Editor says.