A years-long dispute over an alleged “Rothko” forgery has culminated in a total victory for our client, a distinguished New York art dealer.

 

This past year was an exciting one for Grossman LLP, as we continue to build on more than a decade of groundbreaking litigation in the art-law arena.

The Grossman team has won a total victory dismissing all counterclaims in our suit on behalf of a prominent art collector against an art gallery for refusing to rescind a sale of paintings that turned out to be forgeries.

In late 2020, after two-plus years of litigation in multiple jurisdictions and a three-day bench trial in the Southern District of New York, Grossman LLP obtained a win in a title dispute over a painting that was stolen from a major corporate art collection decades ago and replaced with a skilled forgery.  Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that victory. 

This week, the Grossman LLP team obtained a complete dismissal of a lawsuit filed by NBCUniversal executive Ron Meyer against art dealer Susan Seidel.  Meyer’s claims focused on a 2001 art deal involving a painting, purportedly by famed abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, which turned out to be a forgery.

A painting by an American modernist artist that was stolen from a major corporate art collection over thirty-years ago and replaced with a skilled forgery will be returning home after more than two years of litigation.  

Over the last few years, we’ve been following legal developments involving a rash of apparently forged Old Master paintings that have been discovered on the European art market.  This month, one litigant has indicated its intent to appeal a UK court’s decision regarding who should bear the brunt of the financial fallout from one of those fakes.

This week, Grossman LLP notched an initial victory on behalf of its client, art advisor Susan Seidel, who is in litigation with art collector and Universal Studios executive Ronald Meyer over a 2001 art deal.  The Manhattan-based team, aided by its California local counsel, persuaded a federal judge that the lawsuit should proceed in New York, not in Meyer’s chosen forum of California.  The ruling is a reminder that the question of where an art dispute should be litigated can be an important one, and that a plaintiff’s preference may not always prevail.

This fall has seen developments in two cases we’ve been following.  Each case raises unique substantive legal issues, but the recent developments also serve to highlight the costs and complexity of litigating art disputes in court.

This blog has for years followed the Knoedler scandal, in which a venerable New York gallery closed in disgrace in 2011 following revelations that it had sold dozens of artworks—about $60 million worth of paintings purported to be by Rothko, Pollock, Motherwell, and other major Abstract Expressionists—that turned out to be forgeries.  And the fallout from Knoedler’s implosion is ongoing even now; just this month, a federal judge issued a decision with important implications for the upcoming trials in two Knoedler cases.  The ruling also is of general interest to anyone in the art business because it emphasizes the importance of clear business procedures, corporate oversight and legal formalities when it comes to closely held business entities.

​In an important ruling issued last week, a federal judge allowed fraud claims asserted by art collector Andrew Hall to proceed against a former art-history professor and her son, Lorettan and Nicholas Gascard, alleging that they sold him a number of forged Leon Golub works.  The court’s decision is instructive for collectors who may have been duped into purchasing forged artworks, only to discover many years later that they were fakes.

The oddly audacious copying of artwork at Rabbit Town illustrates a simple fact about artists who want to defend their intellectual property rights; that mission gets more complicated when an issue crosses international borders, because there is no universal international copyright law that protects an artwork all over the world.

New Mexico jewelry merchant Nael Ali will soon become the first person ever sentenced under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (“IACA”), a decades-old federal law that prohibits the sale of fake Native American goods.

Canadian art gallery Equinox Gallery Limited (“Equinox”) will be allowed to move forward with its lawsuit against art dealer Fred Dorfman following a favorable decision from a federal judge this week.  Grossman LLP is representing Equinox in the case.
 

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.

Andrew Hall will be able to pursue his suit against Lorettann and Nikolas Gascard, who Hall alleges sold forgeries of paintings by American artist Leon Golub. Hall sued the former art-history professor and her son last fall in federal district court in New Hampshire, claiming that he purchased twenty-four works, either directly from the Gascards or indirectly through auction houses. Hall sued the Gascards for fraud, seeking the return of the approximately $700,000 purchase price for the works.

We have continuously followed stories in the news and in the courts about the continuing efforts of the art market to deal with the problem of forgeries.  From the Knoedler scandal to the concerns about counterfeit Old Masters being peddled on the European market, this issue is clearly not going away anytime soon.  Today, we take note of developments in three more cases that shine a spotlight on this ongoing challenge.

Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $450,000 jury award in a case against a businessman who commissioned knockoff copies of several of the artist’s sculptures. The plaintiff in the case, California artist Donald Wakefield, is known for his large-scale stone and metal sculptural works, each of which is one-of-a-kind.  According to court filings, in 2004 he contacted a handful of real-estate developers whom he believed might be interested in purchasing some of his sculptures.  Hprovided these prospective buyers with information about his work, and he pointed them toward his website displaying photographs of his creations.  One of the businesses he solicited was Olen Properties, owned by billionaire Igor Olenicoff.