How Much To Settle Past Infringement

[SomeISP]

I'm the owner of a small web hosting company. A customer of mine received a notice that one of the images on their website was from a stock image company and used without permission. The customer had hired a web design company to design the site some years back, and the web design company is no longer in business. The image was almost certainly not licensed. The customer removed the image immediately, and has since removed the website entirely.

The stock photo company's lawyer is asking for about $10,000 for resolving the dispute. What is the website owner's best course of action? I advised him to contact a lawyer. What is a reasonable counter offer for settlement, or is $10k the best he can hope for?

The stock photo company is in Florida, and the customer is in Illinois.

[Mr. Knowitall]

You're presumably not his lawyer, so I suggest staying out of the middle.

I have no information about this website, its revenues, or the use of the image. Without that, I can't begin to tell you what's "reasonable."