Tom Brady will be in New York today at a hearing in the litigation over his 4-game suspension by Roger Goodell for allegedly being “generally aware” of the deflation of footballs in the AFC Championship thrashing of the Indianapolis Colts last winter. For good legal analysis of the absolute fiasco that is the NFL’s attempt at a middle-school science project (instigated by the condition of a football introduced from the opposing team—but congratulations on another AFC Finalist banner) and the resulting adjudicatory process, I suggest John Dowd’s blog (“The NFL's investigation of and rules against Tom Brady are a travesty, and they've resulted in uncalled-for penalties. And it's all based on a report that lacks basic integrity, fairness and credibility.”). Dowd is an experienced federal prosecutor and led the investigation, among others, into Pete Rose and gambling for Major League Baseball. Most notably, he was sufficiently offended by the whole exercise to take the issue up with no relationship to the parties. Mike Florio at ProFootballTalk and Steph Stradley have also covered the story well.
Read More
Topics:
Left Shark,
ProFootballTalk,
ALS. Metro,
Copyright Act,
Pete Frates,
David Portnoy,
Indianapolis Colts,
AFC Championship,
Free Brady,
Mike Florio,
Barstool Sports,
Jacqueline Kennedy,
John Dowd,
Ice Bucket Challenge,
Shepard Fairey,
Major League Baseball,
Copyright,
Roger Goodell,
Senator Obama,
Hope,
AFC Finalist,
Andy Warhol,
Tom Brady,
Charlie Baker,
Massachusetts Governor,
Fair Use
Well that didn’t take long.
Just a few days after the FBI released vintage security video footage from the night before the infamous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, a lawyer has told the FBI that a former client called him to claim that he can identify a man seen in the footage. It bears noting that there are two shots showing a man in the new footage (one inside, one outside), and no indication of whether they are the same person. Regardless, George G. Burke of Quincy said that his former client was in the antiques business, and that the anonymous client knows a man in the video from that industry.
Read More
Topics:
Quincy,
Gardner Heist,
Myles Connor,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
FBI,
Richard Abath,
William Youngworth,
George G. Burke,
Museums
As we have often lamented, real news in the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist has been rare, with coverage far more often manufactured around anniversary dates. Last week was an exception at least from the public’s standpoint when the FBI released video footage from the museum the day before the robbery in an effort to solicit the public’s assistance. The FBI posited that the men seen in the video may have been engaged in a trial run for the eventual theft, in which the thieves pretended to be police officers to gain entry to the museum after hours. Most of the recent efforts by law enforcement have focused on Robert Gentile, whom authorities have accused of having information concerning the paintings’ whereabouts. Gentile has consistently denied knowing anything, and has spent time in prison that might have been avoided had he revealed information. Gentile most recently accused the FBI of entrapment, and no progress on that front seems particularly likely, but this approach is a notable shift.
Read More
Topics:
Robert Gentile,
Gardner Heist,
Emerald Necklace,
Mission Hill,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
FBI,
Steven Kurkjian,
Richard Jewell,
Huntington Avenue,
Museums,
Master Thieves: the Boston Gangsters who Pulled of,
Frederick Law Olmstead,
Museum of Fine Arts
A Polish man arrested in February after being accused of trying to sell in Moscow a painting looted by the German army from the National Museum of Poznan during World War II will not be extradited to Poland. The U.S. District Court in New York (Rakoff, J.) concluded that Alexander Khochinsky did not acquire "Girl with Dove" by Antoine Pesne—stolen by the German army—with the knowledge that it was stolen property, and thus, could not be extradited. While there could be a second attempt to extradite him for his conduct after he learned the Polish government considered the painting to be stolen (when he had proposed to exchange it for restitution for his mother’s home), it seems unlikely. The whereabouts of the painting are unknown.
Read More
Topics:
Republic of Poland,
Alexander Khochinsky,
Third Reich,
Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage,
extradition,
Book of Acquisitions of the Greater Poland Museum,
Moscow,
Restitution,
"Girl with Dove",
World War II,
Antoine Pesne,
Kaiser Friedrich-Museum,
National Museum of Poznan,
Litigation,
Diplomatic Note No. 35-15-2013,
Rakoff
The ABA Journal has opened voting again on its annual “Blog 100,” a roll of notable legal blogs. I’ve submitted votes for the following blogs (in no particular order), which I have bookmarked and consult regularly. The great thing about blogging, I have found, is the ability it gives the reader (and the blogger) to survey multiple perspectives on a subject. So when resale royalties are under discussion, or fair use, I don’t want to read only articles that I agree with or that take the same approach that I would. I also want to hear something I never would have thought of, and expand the conversation.
Read More
Topics:
Donn Zaretsky,
Paul Howcroft,
ABA Journal,
Stropheus,
Blogs,
Judith Prowda,
Art Law & More,
London,
Peter Bert,
Fladgate LLP,
Richard Lehun,
Constantine Cannon LLP,
Irina Tarsis,
Blog 100,
Azmina Jasani,
Pierre Valentin,
Silberman and Associates,
Dispute Resolution in Germany,
Art@Law,
Boodle Hatfield LLP,
Taylor Wessing,
Natalia Mikolajczyk,
Private Art Investor,
The Art Law Blog,
Art Law London,
Becky Shaw,
Tim Maxwell,
Center for Art Law,
Frankfurt
Few things have brought consensus recently more than the revulsion over the allegations against comedian Bill Cosby, a Philadelphia native. Yet in a desire to distance itself from Cosby, the city may have crossed a First Amendment line when a well-known mural entitled “Father’s Day” that depicts Cosby was painted over. And even if the city did not run afoul of that constitutional protection, the artist of the mural may have had under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, 17 U.S.C. § 106A (VARA) rights too. Ultimately it will come down to whether the artist or artists object to the fact or the timing of the removal—an objection that would not necessarily be any endorsement or support of Cosby (or have anything at all to do with Cosby), but which might relate more to the right of expression.
Read More
Topics:
Philadelphia Inquirer,
King Jr.,
Philadelphia,
Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990,
Martin Luther,
VARA,
Philadelphia City Mural Arts Program,
Temple University,
University of Massachusetts,
17 U.S.C. § 106A,
Nelson Mandela,
Bill Cosby,
The Washington Post,
First Amendment
Robert Gentile, whom the FBI has claimed has knowledge of the whereabouts of the paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, has moved to dismiss the indictment against him on firearms possession charges. He argues that the current investigation was manufactured solely to pressure him into cooperating with the Gardner investigation, and is unconstitutional as a result. He faces a tall task, but he has raised a few colorable constitutional issues.
Read More
Topics:
Robert Gentile,
Gardner Heist,
Robert Guarente,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
FBI,
Museums
The United States Senate Appropriations Committee has passed its annual State Department appropriations bill, and it includes a strong instruction on Holocaust-era looted assets. The bill, entitled the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2016 (S. 1725) was accompanied by the Committee’s report, which would direct the State Department to include in an annual report an assessment of U.S. domestic law and foreign countries’ status on their compliance with the Washington Principles and the Terezin Declaration. As the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) observed last year, that progress is mixed, at best. This is a budget bill, meaning it is just the first step in allocating resources for the U.S. government in the year to come (in this case, for the State Department).
Read More
Topics:
Legislation,
looted property,
Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues,
Terezin Declaration,
S. 1725,
Georg Baselitz,
Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscat,
2009 Terezin Declaration,
Holocaust,
World Jewish Restitution Organization,
Department of State Foreign Operations and Related,
Report on International Religious Freedoms,
1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets,
WJRO,
Restitution,
Nazi-looted,
Secretary of State,
World War II,
United States Senate Appropriations Committee,
Gerhard Richter,
Washington Principles,
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germa
After sharp criticism of the proposed strengthening of Germany’s cultural property and heritage protection law, German Minister of Culture Monika Grütters told Die Welt yesterday that she is reevaluating the proposal.
Read More
Topics:
Legislation,
cultural property,
Germany,
Bundesländer,
Museums,
Monika Grütters
