Will the Supreme Court Take Up Nazi-era Limitations Periods?

It might.  The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the Solicitor General to submit a brief on the issue of whether states can enact more permissive limitations rules when they may conflict with the foreign affairs doctrine.  Marei Von Saher has been pursuing her claim against the Norton Simon Museum over these two works by Lucas Cranach the Elder.  Von Saher is seeking certiorari with the Supreme Court—and the court has not granted review, it just wishes to hear the position of the federal government first, before deciding whether to review the case. 

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that California may not set aside special rules for Nazi-era claims because it conflicted with the federal government's ability to govern foreign affairs.  The claimant Marei Von Saher is the successor in interest to Jacques Goudstikker who bought the works in a 1931 auction in Berlin. The works remained there in Amsterdam until 1940 when the Nazis instituted a forced sale. After the war, Desiree Goudstikker reached a settlement with the Dutch government. She received some of her husband's inventory, but did not claim another set of works because that would have meant returning the purchase price received from the Germans.

The Dutch government transferred these Cranachs to George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, the descendant of a noble Russian family who was thought to have lost the paintings to the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.  Stroganoff-Scherbatoff sold these works to the Norton Simon Museum in 1971.  The 9th Circuit held first that California's special limitations rule for works looted during the Holocauset era, Sec. 354.3 conflicts with the foreign affairs doctrine.  Though it does not conflict with Executive Branch policy via the President, it does conflict with a power reserved to the Federal government, as California created a "world-wide forum for the resolution of Holocaust restitution claims". 

As a consequence, the claim was left to general limitations principles.  In California the Discovery Rule applies.  A claimant must bring her action within three years of discovering her claim.  This means actual discovery, but also when a reasonably prudent claimant should have discovered she had a claim, and the work first went on display in 1977. 

Yet even if the Supreme Court denies certiorari, Von Saher may have recourse under the new limitations period rules recently signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger, which attaches an actual discovery date on the beginning of an action, eliminating the sometimes difficult due diligence requirement.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week signed into law a new art-theft bill that doesn’t mention the Holocaust but gives all claims seeking the return of stolen art from museums, galleries and dealers a better shot at withstanding the legal argument that they were filed too late. In suits over allegedly stolen art and other scientific, historic and cultural artifacts, the statute of limitations has been extended from three years to six, and the six-year clock starts running when the plaintiff first learned where the object was. Previously, a museum could argue that the clock began running when a work’s whereabouts was first publicized to the extent that someone seeking its return should have known about it then.

"Adam and Eve"  went on display in 1977 when the Norton Simon opened, prompting Los Angeles Times art critic William Wilson to write that he had experienced “a plain shock of unmitigated aesthetic fulfillment” upon seeing them. Museum founder Norton Simon bought the Cranachs from an heir of Russian aristocrats in 1971, and The Times first reported on them in 1972, saying they were among the industrialist's holdings that were being loaned to Princeton University for an exhibition.

Von Saher’s attorney, Lawrence Kaye, said Monday that her legal team, which includes E. Randol Schoenberg, the Los Angeles attorney who in 2006 secured the return of five looted Gustav Klimt paintings from the Austrian government, will wait to see whether the U.S. Supreme Court reinstates the voided California Holocaust art law. If it does not, she would be able to amend her suit to proceed under the state's new art-theft law. But the new law also would allow the Norton Simon Museum to use legal grounds other than the statute of limitations to press its argument that Von Saher waited too long to claim "Adam and Eve."

1. Mike Boehm, Norton Simon's disputed 'Adam and Eve' getting closer look from Supreme Court | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times (2010), http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/10/art-adam-eve-holocaust-norton-simon-.html (last visited Oct 5, 2010).

Unsuccessful Nazi Spoliation Claim

From the LA Times last week, Suzanne Muchnic reports that a federal judge has dismissed a claim against Norton Simon over this work and another by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

A Los Angeles federal judge has dismissed a case that jeopardized the Norton Simon Museum's ownership of a nearly 500-year-old pair of paintings of Adam and Eve by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The action halts dueling lawsuits filed by the museum and Marei von Saher of Connecticut, the heir of a Jewish art dealer who lost the artworks to the Nazis in World War II. The museum filed a motion to dismiss the case, and a hearing was to be held Monday. But Judge John F. Walker granted the motion Thursday afternoon. He did not immediately disclose his reasons for doing so.

The museum's attorney, Luis Li of Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles, declined to comment on the ruling. Von Saher's attorney, Lawrence M. Kaye of the New York firm Herrick, Feinstein, could not be reached for comment.

Cranach's monumental paintings of life-size nudes in the Garden of Eden have been a highlight of Simon's collection since 1971, when the Los Angeles industrialist and collector bought them from George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, an heir of a noble Russian family thought to have lost the paintings to the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. But the Cranachs have a complicated history, at issue in the legal battle.

Von Saher's Dutch father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, bought the paintings in a 1931 auction in Berlin, billed as "Stroganoff Collection Leningrad" and staged to raise funds for Stalin's impoverished government. "Adam" and "Eve" remained in his gallery in Amsterdam until 1940, when the Nazis took over his business. Goudstikker died in a shipboard accident while fleeing the Germans, but his wife, Desiree, and son, Edward, survived, as did a list of artworks left behind.

After the war, Desiree Goudstikker settled with the Dutch government, regaining part of her husband's inventory. She did not claim another group of artworks, including the Cranachs, because she would have had to return payment received from the Germans. That settlement made it possible for Stroganoff-Scherbatoff to pursue his claim. The Dutch transferred the paintings to him in 1966.

The matter might have rested there, but as Holocaust restitution escalated, the Dutch reconsidered claims against Nazi loot, and scholars questioned long-accepted accounts of the Cranachs' Russian history.

There is no doubt that the paintings were sold in the Stroganoff sale, but some researchers think they were among confiscated goods from other collections, included in the auction to give the other items a "noble" provenance and disguise that they actually were being sold by the government.

No evidence that the paintings did or did not belong to the Stroganoffs has been found, but a document has come to light stating that they were in a church and other buildings in Kiev, the capital of what is now Ukraine, a few years before the auction. No one knows how they got there.

Von Saher, the widow of the Goudstikkers' son, has spent the last nine years trying to retrieve artworks owned by her husband's parents.

Last year, the Dutch government gave her 202 works that had been housed in Dutch museums, stating that the Goudstikker case had been handled properly in legal terms but that it had been reconsidered on moral grounds.

She learned that the Cranachs were at the Simon museum in 2000, and her attorney contacted the museum the following year.

Throughout the lengthy period of mediation and legal proceedings, Von Saher has contended that the Simon cannot have title to the paintings because they are stolen goods. The museum has argued that it is the rightful owner of the Cranachs, whether they belonged to the Stroganoffs or not, because the family's heir acquired good title to them under Dutch law, and in any event, California's three-year statute of limitations to challenge the Simon's purchase has long since passed.

In its motion to dismiss the case, the Simon argued that a California law extending the statute of limitations for heirs of Holocaust victims is unconstitutional because it wrongfully empowers the state to remedy war injuries, which is a duty of the federal government.

I haven't had a chance to track down the actual judgment. I'm back in the States at the moment, preparing myself for the AALS hiring conference in Washington D.C. later this week. There appears to be an error in Muchnic's understanding of the relevant California limitations rules. Though the limit is indeed three years, that period does not begin to start running until the claimant discovers, or by exercising reasonable efforts should have discovered the present owner of the object. Since the work has been on display since 1971, a dismissal of the claim was a likely result.

But in any event, California has extended the time with which claimants can bring these kinds of claims for nazi spoliated artworks until 2010 I believe, though I'd have to check that. I've not read anything questioning the constitutionality of that, though it appears to be an interesting question.

Orkin v. Taylor

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower-court ruling denying an attempt by the descendants of a Jewish art collector. They sought to to recover this work, Vue de l’Asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy by Vincent Van Gogh. Elizabeth Taylor bought the work at an auction in 1963 for $260,000. It may fetch up to $15 million at an auction today. The opinion is here. The San Francisco Chronicle has a summary here.

Van Gogh painted the work in 1889 after entering an asylum in Provence. This was only 1 year before he committed suicide. Margarete Mauthner purchased the work in 1907, but left the painting behind when she fled Berlin and went to South Africa in 1939. Mauthner's four descendants claimed she sold the work under duress in 1939.

Both parties "vigorously dispute[d] the circumstances under which Mauthner parted with the painting". This suit really highlights the phrase often uttered with respect to art litigation: a tale of two innocents. Neither party seems to be in the wrong here.

The claimants argued that Mauthner sold the painting under duress, not that the Nazis confiscated it. They brought suit against Taylor, however that claim was thrown out under a 12(b)(6) motion. The district court essentially found that the claimants did not bring a legally recognizable claim. This appeal centered on whether the Holocaust Victims Redress Act created a private right of action, and whether the action was timely.

The Holocaust Victims Redress Act did not create a right of action according to the 9th Circuit. The "Act was a limited bill, passed with an understanding of constitutional limitations on congressional power."

With respect to the timeliness of the action, the court held the action was time-barred as well. California has adopted the "discovery rule". An action for the recovery of art accrues when the rightful owner discovers the location of the work. However, the California Supreme Court has held that the discovery rule incorporates a requirement which accrues the action when the claimant "reasonably could have discovered" the claim. At the very least, the claim could have been discovered in 1990, when Taylor attempted to auction the painting at Sotheby's. She was also listed as the owner of the painting in a 1970 catalogue. Thus the Federal cause of action was inapplicable, and the State claim was time-barred.

Most commentators have agreed this was the right decision. Working against the claimants was the fact that painting was not actually seized by the Nazis, even though the court was interpreting the District Court's ruling in a light most favorable to the plaintiffs. It would have been a difficult case to win on the merits, and would have taken Nazi restitution litigation a step too far in my view. I wonder how exactly the claimants learned of the work and their possible claim. The court didn't really analyze in much detail what the claimants should have done, but did note the various points that Taylor publicized her ownership.

A Gauguin will stay at the TMA

A Federal District Court in Ohio has denied the ownership claims of 15 people seeking an interest in this work. "Street Scene in Tahiti" by Paul Gauguin was purchased by the Toledo Museum of Art in 1939. It's current value is estimated at between $10 and $15 million. A copy of the opinion memorandum is available here, courtesy of Harvard Law Professor Harry Martin III. The work belonged to a German Jew, Martha Nathan. In 1937, she left Germany to escape Nazi persecution. The next year, in 1938, Nathan sold this work to a group of art dealers she had known for some years, who were Jews as well. The three purchased the work for 30,000 Swiss Francs, ($6,900 USD). As Judge Zouhary notes, "this sale occurred outside Germany by and between private individuals who were familiar with each other. The Painting was not confiscated or looted by the Nazis; the sale was not at the direction of, nor did the proceeds benefit the Nazi regime."

The work has hung in the TMA since its purchase in 1939, and Nathan brought other Restitution claims for Nazi persecution, but did not file a claim for the painting. In this case, Judge Zouhary applied Ohio's 4-year statute of limitation. The trick with limitations periods hinges on when the limitations period has started to run. Under Ohio law, the discovery rule dictates that a claim accrues when a claimant discovers, or should have discovered the injury. This is precisely the kind of claim a statute of limitation is intended to cover. It also highlights that often in these cases, the issue of whether a limitations period has expired will often prove outcome-determinative.

The case is a bit peculiar. Often, it is the claimants who bring suit. However, in this case the Toledo Museum of Art preemptively brought an action last year in a quiet title action. Whether the claimants will seek an appeal remains to be seen, but it seems likely given the value of the work. However, they do not have a great set of facts to work with here. Their ultimate success seems quite unlikely.