Two pending cases have invoked the new law
A recent article in the New York Times highlights the change that the recent passage of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2016 has had on disputes about the timeliness of claims for allegedly Nazi-looted art. The odd part, however, is that the case cited by the Times is not one in which the HEAR Act has been invoked or argued, though it could be some day. As far as we are aware, there has been briefing on the effect of the HEAR Act in two cases, my clients’ claim against the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) and Germany in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, and Laurel Zuckerman’s claim as representative of the Leffmann estate in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Only two months after its passage, the law is already changing the terms of debate.
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Topics:
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Germany,
Seated Woman wiht Bent Left Leg (Torso),
Bakalar v. Vavra,
Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Fritz Grünbaum,
Egon Schiele,
David Bakalar,
HEAR Act,
Richard Nagy,
Laurel Zuckerman,
Alice Leffmann
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the judgment against David Bakalar concerning ownership of the drawing Seated Woman with Bent Left Leg (Torso). It is a notable decision first and foremost because it affirms the District Court ruling on the merits of whether the drawing was stolen by the Nazis from the Austrian-Jewish collector Fritz Grünbaum—finding that it was not stolen. Such a ruling is a rarity among wartime restitution cases, the overwhelming majority of which continue to founder on statutes of limitations and jurisdictional defenses. Ironically, even though the court ruled that the work was not stolen and that the current owner could not prove good title, the current owner still prevailed. The details are the key to understanding this case, best described in the District Court decision that the Appeals Court affirmed.
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Topics:
cultural property,
laches,
Second Circuit,
Galerie St. Etienne,
Seated Woman wiht Bent Left Leg (Torso),
Galerie Gutekunst,
Nazis,
Fritz Grünbaum,
Restitution,
Egon Schiele,
World War II,
Mathilde Lukacs,
David Bakalar,
Franz Kieslinger
