Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

US Ninth Circuit applies California choice‑of‑law; Spanish law governs, conferring prescriptive title on Thyssen‑Bornemisza to Nazi‑looted Pissarro despite California’s nemo dat rule

Published on: 12 January 2024

Published by a Law360 reporter

Legal News

Article summary

A three-judge bench of the Ninth Circuit, in a published ruling, held that Spain’s state-run Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection is the rightful owner of the painting ‘Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie’, a 19th-century piece by the French Impressionist Camille Pissarro, reportedly valued in the tens of millions of dollars. The bench found that, under Spanish law, the museum had acquired title by prescription because it bought the work without knowledge of the theft and possessed it for a sufficient period to obtain ownership, thereby meeting the requirements for acquisitive possession under that legal system. The outcome marks a setback for the California claimant who brought the suit nearly twenty years ago — David Cassirer, great-grandson of Holocaust survivor Lilly Neubauer, from whom the painting was taken as she fled Germany in 1939 — and follows almost two years after the US Supreme Court set aside an earlier judgment in which the Ninth Circuit had likewise favoured the museum. In April 2022, the justices determined that the Ninth Circuit had relied on a flawed analysis when concluding that Spanish, rather than California, law governed the dispute...

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