On January 1, 2021, the U.S. Senate overrode President Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 (NDAA), a bill that (perhaps surprisingly) included rules affecting the art market. Specifically, the new...more
(WASHINGTON-October 22, 2020) The heirs to the Jewish art dealers who were forced to sell the medieval devotional art collection known as the Welfenschatz (in English, the Guelph Treasure) to agents of Hermann Goering in 1935...more
10/23/2020
/ Art Collections ,
Comity ,
Expropriation ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Germany ,
Heritage & Culture ,
Jurisdiction ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Petition for Writ of Certiorari ,
Restitution ,
Sovereign Immunity ,
Takings Clause
Robin Pogrebin at the New York Times has written an excellent piece on the news that the Brooklyn Museum intends to sell several works from its collection to raise money. The museum explicitly relies on the pandemic-inspired...more
9/24/2020
/ Art ,
Art Auctions ,
Art Collections ,
Art Dealers ,
Art Sales ,
Artists ,
Cultural Artifacts ,
Fine Art ,
Historic Preservation ,
Museums ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday affirmed the 2019 judgment that allowed the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Museum in Madrid to retain Camille Pissarro’s Rue St. Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie (Rue...more
8/20/2020
/ Adverse Possession ,
Appellate Courts ,
Art ,
Art Collections ,
Cultural Artifacts ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Relations ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Germany ,
International Litigation ,
Museums ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Personal Property ,
Restitution ,
Spain ,
Standard of Review
A recent report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (headlined by Chairman Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Ranking Member Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware) has drawn widespread attention...more
8/13/2020
/ Anti-Money Laundering ,
Art ,
Art Auctions ,
Art Collections ,
Art Dealers ,
Art Sales ,
Bank Secrecy Act ,
Cultural Artifacts ,
Customer Due Diligence (CDD) ,
Financial Regulatory Reform ,
FinCEN ,
Fine Art ,
Know Your Customers ,
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ,
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) ,
Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)
(WASHINGTON-July 2, 2020) The United States Supreme Court today agreed to hear the appeal by Germany and the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) seeking to dismiss the restitution claim by the heirs to the so-called...more
7/2/2020
/ Comity ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Germany ,
International Litigation ,
Jurisdiction ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Restitution ,
Stolen Goods ,
War Crimes
ADVISORY UPDATE: On May 26, 2020, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued additional guidance concerning remote depositions, reiterating its support for remote depositions whenever possible in light of continuing...more
6/24/2020
/ Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Court Schedules ,
Discovery ,
Executive Orders ,
Governor Cuomo ,
Litigation Strategies ,
Remote Depositions ,
Remote Hearings ,
Videoconference ,
Virtual Litigation ,
Witnesses
On behalf of my clients seeking restitution of the Guelph Treasure, or Welfenschatz, we filed today our supplemental brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in response to the Brief of the United States as Amicus Curiae that the...more
Late Tuesday evening—the day after Memorial Day no less—the United States Office of the Solicitor General filed a brief amicus curiae in our clients’ pending case against the Federal Republic of Germany and the Stiftung...more
6/3/2020
/ FCEJCA ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Germany ,
International Litigation ,
Jurisdiction ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Restitution ,
Stolen Goods ,
War Crimes
Since online auctioneer Paddle 8 filed for bankruptcy protection in March, creditors of the company have begun filing their notices of claim in the bankruptcy case. One thing on which the creditors all seem to agree is that...more
Since analyzing the likely consequence of gallery and auctioneer insolvencies last month, we have been keeping an eye on how the economic crisis borne of the COVID19 pandemic is affecting the art world. Essentially every...more
News broke last week that auction house Christie’s had agreed to pay a $16.7 million fine to the Manhattan District Attorney for failing to collect sales tax between 2013 and 2017. This was surprising in many ways, but a...more
With the sudden and far-reaching disruption associated with the COVID-19 crisis, parties to ongoing litigation may wonder how their cases will be affected. In response, many state and federal courts have issued emergency...more
There has been some renewed interest in the case a decade or so ago involving a claim by the heir of Oskar Reichel’s family to a painting in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston: Two Nudes (Lovers) by Oskar Kokoschka. In response...more
Early last week the online auctioneer Paddle 8 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York, on the heels of a recent lawsuit demanding payment for works of art sold at a charitable auction last...more
The Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, or SPK) in Berlin announced that it had agreed to restitute a 1537 painting of the biblical figure Lot by Hans Baldung Grien to the heirs of Hans...more
1/23/2020
/ Appraisal ,
Art Collections ,
Art Dealers ,
Cultural Artifacts ,
Fair Market Value ,
Fine Art ,
Germany ,
Heirs ,
Museums ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Restitution ,
Stolen Goods
While the incomparable Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd does not take place in Dresden, that is where today brought news of a robbery at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the State...more
My client Alexander Khochinsky is safely back in the United States after an eight-month ordeal spurred by Poland’s retaliation for his assertion of restitution for his mother’s property lost in Poland during the Holocaust....more
10/22/2019
/ Bad Faith ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Extradition ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Foreign Sovereigns ,
International Litigation ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Poland ,
Popular ,
Probable Cause ,
Restitution ,
Retaliatory Arrests ,
Stolen Goods
The Appellate Division First Department in New York has affirmed the trial court’s ruling in Reif v. Nagy that the heirs of Viennese actor and Holocaust victim Franz Friedrich (Fritz) Grünbaum are entitled to the return of...more
7/12/2019
/ Appeals ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Germany ,
Good Faith ,
HEAR Act ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Power of Attorney ,
Restitution ,
Statute of Limitations ,
Successors
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today dismissed the petition to rehear en banc last year’s landmark ruling that the heirs of the art dealers who sold the Guelph Treasure (or Welfenschatz) may pursue their...more
The sprawling saga of the M. Knoedler & Co. Gallery forgery scandal is approaching a full decade since the storied gallery closed abruptly in 2011 (fuller background further below). The last pending civil suit related to the...more
5/14/2019
/ Alter Ego ,
Corporate Veil ,
Delaware General Corporation Law ,
Fine Art ,
Forgery ,
Fraudulent Concealment ,
Guilty Pleas ,
Limited Liability Company (LLC) ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Personal Liability ,
Piercing the Corporate Veil ,
Shareholders
One of the longest-running court cases in the United States about art looted by the Nazis has been decided in favor of the current possessor, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, an instrumentality of the Kingdom of...more
Debate has peaked in the last year or so about the treatment and possible restitution of so-called colonial artifacts in Western (i.e., European and North American) museums. The conversation is important for many reasons, but...more
Alexander Khochinsky, the son of a Polish Jew who fled her home just steps ahead of the German invasion in 1941, was detained at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday. The current detention parallels Poland’s previous...more
2/27/2019
/ Bad Faith ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Extradition ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereigns ,
International Litigation ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Poland ,
Probable Cause ,
Restitution ,
Retaliatory Arrests ,
Stolen Goods
I am pleased to be speaking on a panel at the upcoming Global Auction House Summit presented by Invaluable, the leading technology partner for online auction services. I will be presenting on the issues of Managing Reputation...more