Supreme Court rules in case of French painting, Nazi, Spanish museum

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that California property law will be used to decide who owns a French painting — now in the possession of a renowned museum in Spain — that a Jewish woman surrendered to the Nazis in 1939 so that she could flee Germany.

The Supreme Court said lower U.S. court rulings had incorrectly applied Spanish law to determine that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation in Madrid was the rightful owner of the Camille Pissarro painting, titled “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain.”

In the decision, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act requires that a court apply the same law that would apply in a similar lawsuit between two private parties. Kagan noted that in this case, that would be California state property law, as the Cassirer family has argued in its lawsuit against the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.

The dispute over the painting’s ownership now will return to a federal district court to be decided under that law.

The Pissaro painting is believed to be worth tens of millions of dollars, Kagan wrote.

“The path of our decision has been as short as the hunt for Rue Saint-Honoré was long; our ruling is as simple as the conflict over its rightful owner has been vexed,” Kagan wrote.

“A foreign state or instrumentality in an FSIA [Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act] suit is liable just as a private party would be …That means the standard choice-of-law rule must apply. In a property-law dispute like this one, that standard rule is the forum State’s (here, California’s)—not any deriving from federal common law,” Kagan wrote.

Claude Cassirer, who was the original plaintiff in the case, died in 2010. His son, David Cassirer, succeeded him as a plaintiff in the case. The estate of Claude’s late daughter, Ava, and the Jewish Federation of San Diego also succeeded him as plaintiffs.

Paul Cassirer, whose family owned an art gallery and publishing house in Germany, purchased the Impressionistic artwork at the center of the case from an agent for Pissaro in 1900.

More than two decades later, Cassirer’s relative, Lilly Cassirer, inherited the painting.

“But in 1933, the Nazis came to power. After years of intensifying persecution of German Jews, Lilly decided in 1939 that she had to do anything necessary to escape the country,” Kagan wrote.

“To obtain an exit visa to England, where her grandson Claude Cassirer had already relocated, she surrendered the painting to the Nazis,” Kagan wrote.

Lilly and Claude eventually ended up in the United States.

After World War II ended, the Cassirer family searched for the painting but was unable to find it, despite the fact that it sat in a private collection in St. Louis, Mo., from 1952 to 1976, according to Thursday’s ruling.

“After being legally declared the rightful owner, Lilly agreed in 1958 to accept compensation from the German…