New and unexpected episode in the soap opera of Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon. Rain effect (1897), Camille Pissarro box Currently in the collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid, which has been claiming the heirs of Lilly Cassirer, owner to which the Nazis were picked up at the beginning of World War II. The United States Supreme Court, which had already studied the case, issued an order on Monday, buried among other procedural decisions of little draft, of returning it to the Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit (with jurisdiction over the west coast of the country) so that its magistrates decide whether or not to apply or not a law recently approved in California, advantageous for the plaintiffs.
In the center of litigation is an oil painted by the impressionist teacher and sold by his gallery owner in Paris to the Cassirer, German Jewish family of entrepreneurs and art lovers. The only surviving heir of that first owner, David Cassirer has exhausted all possible resources for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, where the canvas arrived after a Rocambolesca Historia, declining the work of the Madrid Museum, where he has been exposed since 1993, and returns it to the family. When Claude Cassirer, a resident in California, grandson and the only heir of Lilly, the last known owner, learned in 2000 that the Thyssen had the painting, claimed his return, but his request was denied. He then opened a legal war in 2005 that his children continued and that seemed finished a couple of years ago, when the Court of Appeals of the Central District of California concluded that the Thyssen is the legitimate owner of the painting.
This instance came after two sentences against two Californian courts (one of Los Angeles, in 2018, and the appeal), and after the case arrived in January 2023 to the Supreme United States, which failed for the first time in favor of the family. The sentence, which sought more than to unify procedural criteria, did not rule on the fate of the table. But it was categorical in his decision to return the ball to the Court of Appeal, considering that the judge was wrong when applying the conflict norm, which is the one that decides which law prevails, if the Spanish or the Californian, in a dispute like this in which there are two in Liza, because the plaintiff is American and the defendant, a foreign state. Spain acquired in 1993 the painting with the rest of the 775 works in the collection of Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza for 350 million dollars (about 336 million euros, to the current change).
In that instance of appeal, a panel formed by three judges again failed that Spanish law was prevailing. According to that legal system, the picture had been exposed for a long time so that it would not have to return it.
After that varapalo to the family, there were news with the promulgation of a new Californian law, which are the ones that have motivated, in an unleashed decision, to the supreme on Monday to return the ball to the lower court. Gavin Newsom, the Governor of the State, signed on September 16 a morr to help “residents to recover art and stolen properties as a result of political persecution.” Actually, it is a law specifically thought for this case, and Newsom was signed by the norm in an event at the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum, surrounded by members of the Cassirer family. “It is a moral and legal imperative that these valuable pieces are returned to their legitimate owners,” said the Democratic governor.
What the Supreme has ordered is for the Court of Appeals to study the case in the light of that law. For Bernardo Cremades, whose family office joined in 2017 as friend of the court To support the Cassirer on behalf of the Federation of Jewish communities of Spain and the Jewish community of Madrid, the decision of the High Court shows that, “despite what seemed, the case is not closed.” “There is still a lot of cloth to cut,” he said Monday in a telephone conversation. “The supreme has made it clear that it is important that Spain meets all its international commitments in relation to the return of expolidated art. Spain has to return that painting. ”
Sources close to Thyssen consider the supreme decision as “purely technical.” Also, which will lead to an unfavorable examination for California law in Liza.
(Last minute news. There will be update shortly).