Fine art is big business. The three most expensive paintings to have ever been sold – Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, Interchange by Willem de Kooning and The Card Players by Paul Cézanne – have an inflation-adjusted...more
A Dirty Business? The art world is replete with tales of whodunits, forgeries, thefts, money laundering, looting of antiquities, murders, ancient curses, etc. You might say it’s a perfect environment for the more...more
Last week the Trotter chatted with her partner and fellow blog editor, Nick O’Donnell. Nick’s practice focuses primarily on complex civil litigation, for which he has appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States....more
A congressional report released on July 29, 2020, by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, exposes how Russian oligarchs looking to evade U.S. sanctions are able to exploit loopholes in the art industry....more
Over eighty years after the end of World War II, crimes committed by the Nazis continue to be redressed, including in our very own Commercial Division. ...more
This case arose out of a dispute between Intervenors-Appellants Yves Bouvier and MEI Invest Ltd. (collectively, “Bouvier”) and Petitioners-Appellees Accent Delight International Ltd. and Xitrans Finance Ltd. (collectively,...more
As previously discussed on this blog, the validity of the California Resale Royalty Act (the “RRA,” Civil Code Section 986), a 1976 law that requires resellers of fine art to pay a royalty of 5 percent to the artists behind...more
Addressing the constitutionality of California’s Resale Royalty Act, Cal. Civ. Code § 986 (“the Act”), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a portion of the Act violated the dormant Commerce Clause of the...more