Legal News

Art recovery statute ruled "too broad"

By Richard Binder

The 9th Circuit ruled last week that a 2002 statute allowing Californians to recover art stolen by Nazis is unconstitutional and goes beyond providing redress.

 According to circuit Judge David R. Thompson, the law's language "suggests that California's real purpose was to create a friendly forum for litigating Holocaust restitution claims, open to anyone in the world to sue a museum or gallery located within or without the state."

The piece of art at the center of the appeal, a diptych of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder, still hangs in the Norton Simon Museum. The Southern California museum bought the painting in 1971.

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Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on August 24, 2009 (boomark / email).