Schoeps v. Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation

The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation (foundation) (defendant) sought to sell a Picasso painting it had purchased at auction. Julius Schoeps (plaintiff), a German national, filed an action in New York state court asserting claims for restitution, constructive trust, declaratory relief, replevin, and conversion. Schoeps claimed that he was a great-nephew of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German-Jewish banker who had been forced to sell the painting under the pressure of Nazi persecution. Schoeps alleged that he was an heir to 12.5 percent of Bartholdy’s estate and that all living heirs had assigned their claims to him. Schoeps filed a first and second amended complaint. The foundation moved to dismiss the first amended complaint for lack of standing because Schoeps had not been appointed a representative of Bartholdy’s estate. Although Schoeps had responded to the foundation’s conflicts-of-law concerns by arguing that German law did not apply, Schoeps maintained that under German law, ownership rights vested immediately in heirs and that Bartholdy’s heirs had the right to sue because Bartholdy could not sue in Nazi Germany. Schoeps sought leave to file a third amended complaint. Schoeps neither verified the complaint nor submitted an affidavit, any written assignments, or expert authority on German law to support his claim to standing. Schoeps’s provenance document lacked an author’s name and notarization. The court granted the foundation’s dismissal motion and denied as moot Schoeps’s motion for leave to file an amended complaint, finding that Schoeps had not been appointed as a personal representative of Bartholdy’s estate and therefore lacked standing to sue. The court observed that any rights to the painting passed to Bartholdy’s estate when Bartholdy died and rejected Schoeps’s argument that he had standing because title vested immediately in Bartholdy’s heirs. Schoeps appealed, relying in part on a federal decision denying summary judgment to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and Guggenheim Foundation in a case that Schoeps and other Bartholdy heirs had brought to recover paintings Bartholdy had sold under similar duress.