I was proud to advise the Allentown Art Museum, which announced today that it has reached an agreement with the heirs of Henry and Hertha Bromberg concerning Portrait of George, Duke of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Elder and...more
Under Armour on Friday said it has agreed to pay $434 million to settle a 2017 class action lawsuit accusing the sports apparel maker of defrauding shareholders about its revenue growth in order to meet Wall Street forecasts....more
We have been writing a lot recently about trends in the global market for fine art. One specific area that deserves attention is steps taken to stamp out laundering illicit funds via the art market, such as through auctions...more
Bond issuers may wish to pursue an unmodified reverse Dutch auction for debt repurchases, an effective but underutilised transaction template that is gaining popularity. During the second half of 2022, amid ongoing...more
The English Court of Appeal in its recent decision in Amir Soleymani v Nifty Gateway LLC v The Competition and Markets Authority [2022] EWCA Civ 1297, held that claims by a high net worth individual that an online auction...more
When Christie’s Auction House first entered the secondary art market of mainland China in 2005, it licensed its brand to a local auction house and received a total of RMB 97,000,000 (roughly $12,100,000) for its inaugural...more
On Jan. 1, 2021, Congress passed the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (AMLA) which expanded the definition of “financial institution” to impose anti-money laundering (AML) requirements on persons “engaged in the trade of...more
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are the latest development in disruptive blockchain technology innovations, this time in the world of digital art, collectibles, and even luxury goods. Traditional auction houses have already...more
Seven Important Traits - Attempting to value NFTs is a speculative and challenging practice, in part because they are still relatively new and there are few comparable assets. The newsletter Bankless gives seven traits to...more
Athletes and entertainers are people, too. Albeit, incredibly talented people, but deserving of the same treatment with dignity and respect as how we would want ourselves to be treated. For better or worse, sometimes their...more
NFTs are extremely hot right now. In March 2021, the digital artist Beeple made history when he sold his NFT of digital art for $69.3 million through Christie’s auction house. Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for...more
In connection with the late-2020 amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to include “dealers in antiquities” as a result of its inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Treasury Department’s Financial...more
Welcome back and to those of you who celebrated a belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day. While I can’t promise that this installment of the Spotlight will be the “hair of the dog,” it should still make for a great accompaniment...more
Welcome back to another week in the Spotlight. It is truly remarkable to think that it has (already? only?) been one year since the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, shuttering sports arenas,...more
Non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) are unique blockchain-based tokens that can represent almost anything, including physical assets. NFTs have been growing significantly in popularity in recent years because of this potential to...more
"It cannot be seriously disputed that the COVID-19 pandemic is a natural disaster." This seemingly straightforward conclusion has only been reached in a small number of reported court decisions since the start of the...more
Millions of people across the country are waiting to get the COVID-19 vaccine. For businesses, immunity is sought not against the virus but against liability, and, in some cases, businesses have been successful in invoking...more
A recent decision from the Southern District of New York may pave the way for broader excuse of performance in COVID-19 force majeure litigation after finding the pandemic is a “natural disaster” that is beyond the parties’...more
Join us for a discussion of estate and philanthropic planning for art and other valuable collections. Topics to be covered include: - Collection ownership and management to protect the value of the collection (document,...more
Case law is beginning to take shape on the relationship among the COVID-19 pandemic, related government-mandated shutdowns, and force majeure clauses in contacts. There have been very few reported decisions in this arena,...more
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic constituted a “natural disaster” under a contract’s force majeure provision, Judge Denise Cote of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York recently ruled in JN...more
The Southern District of New York has recently issued a decision that could ultimately have a significant impact on the enforceability of contracts that required performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. In JN Contemporary...more
As we’ve blogged, high-end artwork can create an ideal vehicle for money laundering. And, as we’ve also blogged, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for the U.S. Senate released in July 2020 a detailed report titled...more
It would be a truism to note that COVID-19 has had a profound impact on many sectors globally. The art industry, which relies considerably on the human interaction between art dealers, artists, and members of the public, is...more
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