Supreme Court Revives Lawsuit Over Nazi-Looted Painting

The Ninth Circuit sided with a Spanish museum against the original owner’s descendant.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Feb. 10, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court this week revived a lawsuit about a valuable French impressionist painting confiscated by the Nazis from a Jewish woman whose American descendant wishes to reclaim it.

The issue was whether “Saint-Honoré Street, Afternoon, Rain Effect,” an 1897 oil painting by Camille Pissarro, should stay in the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, Spain, or pass to the woman’s great-grandson. The foundation that operates the museum is an agency of the Spanish government.

California, where the lawsuit originated, enacted a law last year that makes it easier for Holocaust survivors and their descendants to take back stolen art.

The Supreme Court granted the petition to hear the case in Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation in an unsigned order on March 10, in light of the new California law. No justices dissented.

The foundation purchased the painting in 1993 from Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, who had acquired it “under suspicious circumstances from a New York gallery in 1976,” according to the petition filed with the Supreme Court in May 2021 and previously reported on by The Epoch Times.

The Nazi regime required the late owner of the painting to trade it for exit visas and roughly $360, a small fraction of its actual value. Lilly Cassirer, the great-grandmother of petitioner David Cassirer, complied in 1939 and escaped from Nazi Germany. She was never able to receive the payment from the Nazis because the account was blocked, and she spent years trying to locate the missing painting before she died in 1962.

Before that, in 1958, she accepted $13,000 in reparations from the post-Nazi government in Germany. Unknown to her, the painting had been smuggled into California and traded privately.

The U.S. Court of Restitution Appeals—a court established by the U.S. government in occupied Germany—previously determined Lilly Cassirer to be the rightful owner of the painting, but it was assumed at the time to have been lost or destroyed in the war.

Decades ago, a friend of one of her descendants spotted the painting, now worth tens of millions of dollars, on display in Spain.

In 2022, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the petitioner and against the Spanish museum, and overturned an August 2020 ruling by the Ninth Circuit that held federal—not state—law should apply in such disputes.

The Supreme Court found that even though foreign entities are generally immune to lawsuits in the United States, this case falls under one of the exceptions in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), a federal statute.

In California, the legal burden on art theft victims for proving rightful ownership was lower than in Spain. The Supreme Court determined that in disputes such as this, lower courts should rely on state law, and in this specific case, on California law.

In its March 10 ruling, the Supreme Court granted summary judgment for David Cassirer and set aside a January 2024 ruling by the Ninth Circuit that found Spanish law prevailed and that sided with the museum.

The Supreme Court did not hold oral arguments in the case this time and did not explain its decision.

The Supreme Court again sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration in light of California Assembly Bill 2867, which was enacted in 2024.

The state law provides that “California substantive law shall apply” in all pending and future cases filed by California residents to take back stolen artworks possessed by a museum or covered by the federal Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, according to the petition filed with the Supreme Court on Dec. 6, 2024.

According to the petition, the state law states that it “aligns California law with federal laws, federal policies, and international agreements prohibiting pillage and seizure of works of art and cultural property and calling for restitution of seized property, as embodied” in two international treaties, three federal statutes, and “related federal executive branch policies and international agreements."  The petition urged the high court to accept the case.

The museum said in a brief filed on Feb. 2 that the Supreme Court should deny the petitioner’s request for review because the new state statute is “discriminatory, unconstitutional on its face, subject to federal preemption, and does not justify” action by the court. Federal preemption means that a state law that conflicts with federal law is invalid.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Cassirer’s attorney, David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner in Armonk, New York, and the museum’s attorney, Thaddeus Stauber of Nixon Peabody in Los Angeles. No replies were received by publication time.

David Cassirer told reporters he was thankful to the Supreme Court “for insisting on applying principles of right and wrong.”

Stauber told reporters the Supreme Court’s order will provide an opportunity for the lower courts to consider the California statute and its impact on the museum’s “repeatedly affirmed rightful ownership.”

It is unclear when the Ninth Circuit will begin proceedings to reconsider the case.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.