The St. Louis Art Museum has defeated the federal goverment's efforts to seize the Egyptian Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer under U.S. customs laws.
The Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer is a funerary mask of an ancient Egyptian noblewoman. The St. Louis Art Museum purchased it from a dealer in 1998. Sometime later, the United States began to seek its seizure, arguing that it was stolen property. The museum sued the government in the first instance to seek a declaration that the attempts to seize the Mask should cease. The United States then brought a civil forfeiture action under U.S. customs laws (proceedings in which the object is the defendant, making the case United States v. The Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer; it is left to the person claiming ownership to file a claim in which she bears the burden of proof). In its papers, the government essentially argued that the fact that the Mask had gone missing in Egypt by 1973 and then surfaced in a sale in the United States decades later, meant that it could not have been imported legally.
As readers of the Art Law Report will recall, under 19 U.S.C. § 1595a, whether the importer, or subsequent purchaser knows the object is stolen is irrelevant; if the U.S. can show that it was already stolen when imported, the claimant is generally out of luck. The only upside for claimants in these situations is that the governing procedural rules require the government to allege with particularity the circumstances showing that the object was “stolen, smuggled or clandestinely imported or introduced.”
As noted above, the claimant (here the St. Louis Art Museum) often faces a daunting task in these circumstances. The court took a particularly critical view of the government’s allegations, however. The court stated “the claimant cannot even be sure of the who, what, when or where of the alleged events surrounding the alleged ‘stealing,’ nor can the Museum ascertain if the Government is pursuing of the Mask based on alleged theft or a unlawful import/export, or both.” Harsher still, the court held that “the Government has been completely remiss in addressing the law under which the Mask would be considered stolen.”
It is, no matter how you look at it, a momentous win for the museum.
