Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued the latest—and likely final—ruling in Marei von Saher’s decades-long attempt to recover artwork looted by the Nazis from her late father-in-law.  In ruling against von Saher, the Ninth Circuit has ensured that the Cranachs will remain in the museum, and accessible to the public, for the foreseeable future.  This ruling will have significant implications for heirs of those who originally owned Nazi-looted artworks, especially where such heirs have already tried and failed to recover artwork through the official restitution channels instituted by European governments in the post-war years.  

Yesterday afternoon, a lawsuit was filed in the New York State Supreme Court for the seizure and return of four artworks with an aggregate value of $1.66 million.  In addition to bringing a civil replevin claim seeking recovery of the Works, the plaintiff has requested a Court order authorizing a sheriff to seize the Works from the defendant.  As this lawsuit progresses further, it may present a useful opportunity to observe the application in the art-law context of a New York statute governing such seizure orders.

​Last summer, Grossman LLP successfully represented renowned artist and photographer Peter Beard and his studio in a lawsuit over three of his original artworks.  The Chase defendants appealed to a higher court—the state’s Supreme Court Appellate Division, First Department—which held oral arguments on the appeal in January.  And this week, the appellate court again handed an important victory to Mr. Beard.

We continue to follow the ongoing conversation in the art world about how best to handle disputes over artwork that was looted or displaced during the chaos and persecution of World War II.  As one recent story demonstrates, sometimes a current possessor demonstrates willingness to return a work to rightful claimants but looks to a third party for compensation for the loss.

We’ve written before about a high-profile case involving a Modigliani work, Seated Man with a Cane, which was allegedly taken from Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer who fled Paris in 1939 as the Nazis took over the city.  Last week, a New York state court judge permitted a representative of his estate to proceed with claims against the work’s current possessors.

Earlier this week, Justice O. Peter Sherwood of the New York County Supreme Court rejected collector Hubert Neumann’s attempt to prevent Sotheby’s from auctioning off Jean-Michael Basquiat’s monumental work, Flesh and Spirit.

On April 19, the European Parliament—the legislative body of the European Union—adopted the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive.  The new legislation will significantly affect Europe’s art market, and prominent members of the art world have already expressed their concerns about the practical consequences of the Directive.

In a lawsuit filed last week in New York state court (see No. 651889/2018, N.Y. Co.), an art collector has sued over the problems he purportedly encountered in purchasing a sculpture by famed artist Jeff Koons.

The descendants of Austrian-Jewish cabaret performer Fritz Grunbaum have been working for years to recover some of the art that Grunbaum owned in the years before the Nazis rose to power.  Now, the Grunbaum heirs have achieved a new victory.  

In a lengthy opinion issued earlier this week, Judge Loretta A. Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the Metropolitan Museum of Art may keep a noteworthy Picasso artwork, even though its German-Jewish former owners sold it for a fraction of its actual value to finance their safe passage out of fascist Italy.

A lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal district court last week reveals how Bernard Madoff’s nearly decade-old Ponzi scheme continues to reverberate, even in the art world.

Famed artist Richard Prince is no stranger to litigation; over the years, he’s been sued by multiple plaintiffs whose art he has incorporated into his own “appropriation art” works.  A few years ago, he was the defendant in the Cariou v. Prince case, which resulted in an important Second Circuit Opinion about the fair-use defense to copyright infringement.

In our ongoing coverage of case law involving Nazi-looted artworks, we have written before about the long-running lawsuit over a Pissarro painting, Rue St. Honore, après midi, effet de pluie. Back in 2015, we wrote about a district-court decision that dealt a possibly-fatal blow to the claimants, who were seeking to recover the work from a collection controlled by the Spanish government. Earlier in July, however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, meaning the painting’s claimants can continue their fight in the federal courts.

Convicted forger Vincent Lopreto has been arrested again in connection with forged artworks, having allegedly commenced another art-fraud scheme just weeks after his release from a two-year prison sentence for a similar crime.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts filed a preemptive lawsuit regarding Warhol’s appropriation of a photograph of the late musician Prince Rogers Nelson, also known as Prince. The Foundation’s counterparty is Colorado-based photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who, in 1981, took a photograph of Prince.

Last week, a New York judge granted summary judgment for the estate of an art collector on multiple claims against an art advisor who brokered the sale of the collector’s Basquiat work and, unbeknownst to the seller, pocketed a hefty profit.  See Schulhof v. Jacobs, Docket No. 157797/2013 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.).

A recent conference in Geneva reflects an attempt by private art-market actors to raise awareness and address the problems of illicit trafficking of art and antiquities.  While such illegal activity in the art market is hardly limited to Switzerland, the nation’s freeports and custom-free zones make it particularly vulnerable to attempts to circumvent international laws.  And the Geneva Freeport specifically is reeling from recent negative publicity—including the feud between Yves Bouvier and Dmitry Rybolovlev, the discovery of an allegedly Nazi-looted Modigliani painting, and the seizure of looted Syrian antiquities. 

In November, we wrote about increasing scrutiny of multiple Old Master artworks that have recently come under suspicion as potential forgeries.  Now, federal litigation has commenced in connection with the scandal, as Sotheby’s attempts to recover sale proceeds from a collector who sold one of the fake works at a 2012 Sotheby’s auction.

A new lawsuit was filed in New York federal court in mid-January against the famed Getty Museum over a series of negotiations regarding an Italian collection of classical art. The plaintiffs are entities who claim they spent considerable time and effort preparing the collection for sale, laying the groundwork for a deal, and facilitating delicate communications between the Getty, Italian officials, and the collection’s owners; but were later frozen out of those other parties’ dealings, leaving the plaintiffs empty handed.

We’ve written before about the bitter feud between Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev and his former art dealer, Swiss businessman Yves Bouvier.  Our previous post contains more detail, but in short, in 2014, the two had a highly-publicized falling-out after Rybolovlev accused Bouvier of overcharging him—to the tune of as much as $1 billion—for dozens of artworks that Bouvier helped him to acquire.