{"id":259677,"date":"2026-06-08T21:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/259677\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T21:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:14:07","slug":"after-nine-years-of-delays-new-york-court-unfreezes-case-over-sale-of-nazi-looted-degas-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/259677\/","title":{"rendered":"After nine years of delays, New York court unfreezes case over sale of Nazi-looted Degas painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Manhattan appellate court<\/a> changed course on a lawsuit by a family who says that Christie\u2019s<\/a> auction house sold a Nazi-looted Edgar Degas painting without consulting or benefiting the living heirs of the victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The descendants of holocaust survivor Margaret Kainer brought the case in 2013, only to hit a roadblock for more than nine years as New York\u2019s court system waited for the Swiss court system to reach a decision on whether they are legitimate heirs.<\/p>\n

The appellate court ruled on June 4 that the long-dormant case \u201cseeking justice for a plunder that occurred in the \u2018unique and horrific circumstances of World War II and the Holocaust\u2019 should move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manhattan Supreme Court originally issued a pause on the case in 2017, and New York\u2019s Appellate Division, First Department, and the Court of Appeals upheld that decision in 2019 and 2021, respectively. The Manhattan-based appellate court reconsidered that decision after the heirs renewed the claim last year, ruling that any further delay threatens their ability to ever get justice or piece together historical facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want the responsibility of prosecuting this action to fall to the next generation of Margaret\u2019s heirs,\u201d wrote Associate Justice John Higgitt in a unanimous decision by the appellate court.<\/p>\n

Notably, the court emphasized in the decision that the question over whether the plaintiffs are in fact the lawful heirs to Kainer\u2019s art collection remains open,\u201d but that the case should proceed into discovery so that the parties can seek to shed some light on that issue. In the initial complaint, the heirs wrote that they had formally applied to the Manhattan Surrogate\u2019s Court to represent the estate.<\/p>\n

In their complaint, the heirs claimed that the Swiss bank UBS falsely took control over a foundation in charge of overseeing Margarte Kainer\u2019s assets \u2014 including the painting in question \u2014 after she died without children in France in 1968. The foundation allegedly told European authorities that Kainer had no heirs and claimed ownership of the painting by virtue of a 1972 \u201ccertificate of partial inheritance\u201d issued by German authorities, according to the court papers.<\/p>\n

The sale of the pastel artwork \u201cDanseuses\u201d by the French Impressionist painter took place in 2009, after the foundation struck a deal with Christie\u2019s in exchange for a portion of the sale proceeds. <\/p>\n

Christie\u2019s sold the piece first to a private buyer and then arranged an auction a few days later, where it went for $10.7 million.\n<\/p>\n

The heirs originally sought to recover the assets they claimed were \u201clooted\u201d by UBS and Christie\u2019s as part of the deal. The Supreme Court\u2019s 2017 decision dismissed the claims against UBS and the foundation, arguing that New York was not the proper venue to pursue litigation against these foreign entities, but only paused the case against Christie\u2019s while the international litigation continued.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe plaintiffs argue the settlement agreement did not include the correct heirs\u2014a question that is the subject of a foreign court proceeding to which Christie\u2019s is not a party,\u201d wrote a spokesperson for Christie\u2019s in response to the court decision. \u201cAs here, Christie\u2019s Restitution team remains deeply committed to resolving provenance issues before offering objects for sale through fair and just resolutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine and a half years later, nothing is close to being resolved in the Swiss case, according to the court papers.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Justice John Higgitt wrote that the heirs will need to seek discovery in their claims against Christie\u2019s around the 2009 sale of the painting, and further delays could risk making it \u201cmore difficult if not impossible\u201d for the heirs to reconstruct the facts necessary to prove their case.<\/p>\n

He also wrote that with respect to Nazi-looted art, state and federal policy dictate that cases be resolved expeditiously.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe simply conclude that at this point in time, the interests of justice are best served by vacating the stay,\u201d Higgitt wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Manhattan appellate court changed course on a lawsuit by a family who says that Christie\u2019s auction house…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1149,22080,101016,3100,9,11,10,30915],"class_list":["post-259677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-art","tag-christies","tag-degas","tag-lawsuit","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-painting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}