Court Opinion

ID: 9481634
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:26:53.128977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:28.807204
License: Public Domain

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge, concurring:
The formulation of sound rules for resolving disputes concerning the right to possession of stolen art is not an easy task, and the soundness of the rules adopted for such disputes may well be perceived rather differently depending on the perspective of the contestants. In some situations, a work of art is in the possession of a museum, where it has remained for many years after purchase from a reputable dealer; it subsequently develops that the work was stolen from its original owner, who years after the theft claims the property from the museum. In other situations, a work of art is stolen from a museum, which ultimately locates the work and claims it from the possessor who may have purchased the work from a reputable dealer. Museums in possession of stolen art will probably think it preferable to fashion rules that place some obligation on owners to act with diligence in seeking to locate works they claim were stolen from them. On the other hand, museums that are the victims of theft will probably think it preferable to have rules that minimize the obligation of owners to locate their stolen property. Since it is likely that museums are more frequently good-faith purchasers or innocent donees of stolen art than victims of art thefts, they probably would prefer rules that tilt slightly in favor of possessors, at least with respect to a duty of theft victims to act with some diligence in locating stolen art.
In DeWeerth v. Baldinger, 836 F.2d 103 (2d Cir.1987), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1056, 108 S.Ct. 2823, 100 L.Ed.2d 924 (1988), a New York diversity case, we noted the New York rule that the statute of limitations for recovery of stolen property begins to run from the time when a person who claims the property was stolen from him locates it and his demand for its return is refused, but, in the absence of authoritative New York law, we added a qualification that the theft victim must exercise reasonable diligence in endeavoring to locate the property. Id. at 107, 110. That qualification would have provided some comfort to museums that innocently purchase stolen art.
Thereafter, a case arose in the New York courts in which a museum that was the victim of an art theft asserted its claim for possession. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that, for purposes of the statute of limitations, New York law contains no requirement of due diligence on the part of the original owner in locating property allegedly stolen from it. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation v. Lubell, 77 N.Y.2d 311, 567 N.Y.S.2d 623, 569 N.E.2d 426 (1991). However, the Court also ruled that the diligence of the original owner in seeking to locate its property was a relevant consideration in applying the doctrine of laches. Id. at 321, 567 N.Y.S.2d at 628, 569 N.E.2d at 431 (“[The possessor’s] contention that the museum did not exercise reasonable diligence in locating the painting will be considered by the Trial Judge in the context of her laches defense.”). The result of this decision is to permit a court encountering a dispute between a theft victim and a good-faith possessor to consider and balance all the equities, including the reasonableness of the efforts the theft victim made to locate the property and the reasonableness of the possessor’s basis for believing that it was entitled to obtain and keep the property.
Such a broad inquiry will permit a sensitive resolution of difficult disputes in which there is often much to be said for the positions of each of the contending sides. Now that New York has authoritatively advised us that the diligence of the original owner is to be considered not in determining accrual of the statute of limitations, as we thought in DeWeerth, but only in assessing the equities under the doctrine of laches, we must apply that approach to all cases governed by New York law. Since Judge Kaufman’s opinion carefully applies the learning of Lubell to the facts of the pending case, I readily concur in his thorough opinion.