Setback for heirs in long-running Nazi art restitution case
The heirs of a woman who was forced to give up a painting to the Nazis suffered a blow Tuesday in a decades-long legal feud between them and the Spanish museum that now owns the work, when a California appeals court ruled that it retain museum property.
The ruling, in one of the longest-running Nazi restitution cases, concerns a painting by Camille Pissarro titled ‘Rue Saint-Honoré Après-midi, Effet de Pluie’ (‘Rue Saint-Honoré in the afternoon, effect of rain’). estimated to be worth millions of dollars. The painting was surrendered in 1939 by a Jewish woman, Lilly Cassirer, to obtain an exit visa from Germany. The work was purchased by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation and eventually ended up in a museum owned by the Spanish government.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Spanish law, not California law, applies to the case, and that the museum has a “normal title” to the painting after it bought it in 1993.
Sam Dubbin, attorney for David Cassirer, Lilly’s great-grandson and lead prosecutor in the case, wrote in an email to The New York Times that the court’s decision was incorrect and that Cassirer would request an en banc review by a panel of experts. 11 judges.
“The Cassirers believe that, especially in light of the explosion of anti-Semitism in this country and around the world today, they must challenge Spain’s continued insistence on harboring Nazi-looted art,” Dubbin wrote . “This decision also gives the green light to looters around the world.”
Lawyers for the museum said in an email that the ruling is “a welcome closure to this case.”
Cassirer’s heirs, who now live in Southern California, have been embroiled in the legal battle against the museum since 2005, when Claude Cassirer, David’s late father, initially filed a lawsuit. The heirs argue that the museum must return the painting to the original owners. The museum’s lawyers have argued that the museum’s curators did not know the painting had been stolen and bear no responsibility for its return under Spanish law, while Cassirer’s lawyers have argued that the museum’s curators could have blamed the theft discovered if they had done their due diligence in investigating the theft. history of the painting.
The main legal issue was whether Spanish or American law should apply in this situation. The Cassirer family faced a series of setbacks after multiple courts determined that Spanish law governed the case and the museum retained ownership of the painting.
The Cassirers then petitioned the Supreme Court, which took up the case. In a unanimous decision in 2022, the court remanded the case to the appellate level, ruling that the lower court should compare Spanish law with California law, rather than federal law, in considering the case.
Neither party in the lawsuit disputes the facts of the case surrounding Lilly Cassirer’s submission of the work. And in 1958, Germany paid her damages of about $265,000, in today’s dollars.
The painting was later sold at a Nazi government auction and passed through the hands of several collectors, including those in the United States, before being purchased by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1976. The Spanish government purchased the baron’s art collection. including the painting, in 1993 and on display in the museum ever since. In 2000, Claude Cassirer discovered that the painting was in the museum.
In a concurring opinion for the Ninth Circuit Court, Judge Consuelo M. Callahan wrote that while she agreed with the court’s decision that the Spanish museum had no legal obligation to return the painting, she found that the museum still had a moral had a duty to do so.