California rejoins fight over Nazi-looted painting held by Spanish museum

California is erstwhile again warring successful national tribunal for a Jewish family’s close to person a precious Impressionist coating returned to them by a Spanish depository astir 90 years aft it was looted by the Nazis.

The authorities is besides defending its ain authorization to legally necessitate creation and different stolen treasures to beryllium returned to different victims with ties to the state, adjacent successful disputes that agelong acold beyond its borders.

The authorities has repeatedly weighed successful connected the lawsuit since the Cassirer household archetypal filed it portion surviving successful San Diego successful 2005. Last year, it passed a caller instrumentality designed to bolster the ineligible rights of the Cassirers and different families successful California to retrieve invaluable spot stolen from them successful acts of genocide oregon governmental persecution.

On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s bureau filed a question to intervene successful the Cassirer lawsuit straight successful bid to support that law. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation — which is owned by Spain and holds the Camille Pissarro masterpiece — has claimed that the instrumentality is unconstitutional and should truthful beryllium ignored.

Bonta, successful a connection to The Times, said the instrumentality is “about fairness, motivation — and ineligible — responsibility, and doing what’s right,” and the authorities volition support it successful court.

“There is thing that tin undo the horrors and nonaccomplishment experienced by individuals during the Holocaust. But determination is thing we tin bash — that California has done — to instrumentality what was stolen backmost to survivors and their families and bring them immoderate measurement of justness and healing,” Bonta said. “As Attorney General, my occupation is to support the laws of California, and I mean to bash truthful here.”

Bonta said his bureau “has supported the Cassirers’ quest for justness for 2 decades,” and “will proceed to combat with them for the rightful instrumentality of this invaluable household heirloom.”

Thaddeus J. Stauber, an lawyer for the museum, did not reply questions from The Times. Bonta’s bureau said Stauber did not reason its intervening successful the case.

Sam Dubbin, the Cassirers’ longtime attorney, thanked Bonta’s bureau for “intervening successful this lawsuit again to support California’s interests successful protecting the integrity of the creation marketplace and the rights of stolen spot victims.”

“California instrumentality has ever provided beardown protections for the victims of stolen spot and stolen creation successful particular, which the Legislature has consistently reinforced,” Dubbin said.

The authorities bucked the almighty U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by passing the instrumentality past year. The appellate tribunal recovered successful a ruling successful January 2024 that the coating was lawfully owned by the Spanish museum.

Bonta’s latest determination ratchets up the intrigue surrounding the 20-year-old case, which is being watched astir the globe for its imaginable implications successful the high-stakes satellite of looted creation litigation.

The coating successful question — Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré successful the Afternoon. Effect of Rain” — is estimated to beryllium worthy tens of millions of dollars. Both sides admit it was stolen from Lilly Cassirer Neubauer by the Nazis successful 1939, aft she agreed successful desperation to surrender it to a Nazi appraiser successful speech for a visa to fly Germany astatine the dawn of World War II.

The attraction surrounding the case, and its imaginable to acceptable caller precedent successful planetary law, apt makes the coating adjacent much valuable.

After World War II, Lilly received compensation for the coating from the German government, but the household ne'er relinquished its close to the masterpiece — which astatine the clip was considered lost. What she was paid was a fraction of the existent estimated worth.

In the decades that followed, Lilly’s grandson Claude Cassirer — who had besides survived the Holocaust — moved with his household to San Diego.

In 2000, Claude made the shocking find that the coating was not mislaid to clip aft all, but portion of a immense creation postulation that Spain had acquired from the precocious Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, the scion of a German industrialist household with ties to Hitler’s regime. Spain restored an aboriginal 19th-century palace adjacent the Prado Museum successful Madrid successful bid to location the postulation arsenic the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Claude asked the depository to instrumentality the coating to his family. It refused. He sued successful U.S. national tribunal successful 2005. The lawsuit has been moving done the courts ever since.

California passed its caller instrumentality successful effect to the 9th Circuit ruling past year, which held that authorities instrumentality astatine the clip required it to use an archaic Spanish law. That measurement dictates that the rubric to stolen goods passes legitimately to a caller proprietor implicit time, if that proprietor wasn’t alert the goods were stolen erstwhile they acquired them — which the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection has argued makes its ownership of the coating legally sound.

In September 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the caller instrumentality during a tiny gathering with the families of Holocaust survivors astatine the Holocaust Museum LA. Lilly’s great-grandson and Claude’s lad David Cassirer, who present lives successful Colorado, was there, praising the state’s lawmakers for “taking a definitive basal successful favour of the existent owners of stolen art.”

In March, the Supreme Court successful a little bid ruled that the 9th Circuit indispensable reconsider its ruling successful airy of California’s caller law.

In September, the Thyssen-Bournemisza Collection filed a question asking the appellate tribunal to regularisation successful its favour erstwhile more. It enactment guardant aggregate arguments, but among them was that California’s caller instrumentality was “constitutionally indefensible” and deprived the depository of its owed process rights.

“Under binding Supreme Court precedent, a State whitethorn not, by legislative fiat, reopen time-barred claims and transportation spot whose ownership is already vested,” the depository argued.

It said the U.S., nether national law, “does not question to enforce its spot laws oregon the spot laws of its ain states connected different overseas sovereigns, but alternatively expressly acknowledges that antithetic ineligible traditions and systems indispensable beryllium taken into relationship to facilitate conscionable and just solutions with respect to Nazi-looted creation cases.”

It said California’s instrumentality takes an “aggressive approach” that “disrupts the national government’s efforts to support uniformity and amicable relations with overseas nations,” and “stands arsenic an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of national policy.”

David Cassirer, the pb plaintiff successful the lawsuit since Claude’s decease successful 2010, argued the other successful his ain filing to the court.

Cassirer argued that California’s caller instrumentality requires an result successful his favour — which helium said would besides hap to beryllium successful enactment with “moral commitments made by the United States and governments worldwide, including Spain, to Nazi victims and their families.”

“It is undisputed that California substantive instrumentality mandates the grant of rubric present to the Cassirer family, arsenic Lilly’s heirs, of which Plaintiff David Cassirer is the past surviving member,” Cassirer’s attorneys wrote.

They wrote that California instrumentality holds that “a thief cannot convey bully rubric to stolen works of art,” and truthful requires the instrumentality of the coating to Cassirer.

Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who sponsored the measure successful the legislature, praised Bonta for stepping successful to support the instrumentality — which helium called “part of a decades agelong quest for justness and is rooted successful the content that California indispensable basal connected the close broadside of history.”