Opinion ID: 134749
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: For present purposes I assume the following:

Text: 1. Adele Bloch-Bauer died in Vienna in 1925. Her will asked her husband Ferdinand `kindly' to donate, upon his death, six Klimt paintings to the Austrian Gallery (Gallery). A year later, Ferdinand formally assured the Austrian probate court that he would honor his wife's gift. See ante, at 682; 317 F. 3d 954, 959 (CA9 2002); 142 F. Supp. 2d 1187, 1192-1193 (CD Cal. 2001); Brief for Petitioners 6. 2. When the Nazis seized power in Austria in 1938, Ferdinand fled to Switzerland. The Nazis took over Bloch-Bauer assets, and a Nazi lawyer, Dr. Führer, liquidated Ferdinand's estate. Dr. Führer disposed of five of the six Klimt paintings as follows: He sold or gave three to the Gallery; he sold one to the Museum of the City of Vienna; and he kept one. (The sixth somehow ended up in the hands of a private collector who gave it to the Gallery in 1988.) See ante, at 682, 683, n. 3; 317 F. 3d, at 959-960. 3. Ferdinand died in Switzerland in 1945. His will did not mention the paintings, but it did name a residuary legatee, namely, Ferdinand's niece, Maria Altmann, by then an American citizen. As a residuary legatee Altmann received Ferdinand's rights to the paintings. See ante, at 681; 317 F. 3d, at 960, 968; Brief for Petitioners 6-7. 4. In 1948, Bloch-Bauer family members, including Altmann, asked Austria to return a large number of family artworks. At that time Austrian law prohibited export of artworks . . . deemed to be important to Austria's cultural heritage. But Austria granted Altmann permission to export some works of art in return for Altmann's recognition, in a legal agreement, of Gallery ownership of the five Klimt paintings. (The Gallery already had three, the Museum of the City of Vienna transferred the fourth, and the Bloch-Bauer family, having recovered the fifth, which Dr. Führer had kept, donated it to the Gallery.) See ante, at 683; 317 F. 3d, at 960; 142 F. Supp. 2d, at 1193-1195; Brief for Petitioners 6-8; App. 168a. 5. Fifty years later, newspaper stories suggested that in 1948 the Gallery had followed a policy of asserting ownership of Nazi-looted works of art that it did not own. Austria then enacted a restitution statute allowing individuals to reclaim properties that were subject to any such false assertion of ownership or coerced donation in exchange for export permits. The statute also created an advisory board to determine the validity of restitution claims. See ante, at 684; 142 F. Supp. 2d, at 1195-1196; Brief for Petitioners 8. 6. In 1999, Altmann brought claims for restitution of several items including the five Klimt paintings. She told the advisory board that, in 1948, her lawyer had wrongly told her that the Gallery owned the five Klimt paintings irrespective of Nazi looting (title flowing from Adele's will or Ferdinand's statement of donative intent to the probate court). In her view, her 1948 agreement amounted to a coerced donation. The advisory board ordered some items returned (16 Klimt drawings and 19 porcelain settings), but found that the 5 Klimt paintings belonged to the Gallery. See 317 F. 3d, at 960-962; 142 F. Supp. 2d, at 1195-1196; Brief for Petitioners 8, and n. 4. 7. Altmann then brought this lawsuit against the Gallery, an agency or instrumentality of the Austrian Government, in federal court in Los Angeles. She seeks return of the five Klimt paintings.