United States of America v. An Original Manuscript … Bearing the Signature of Junipero Serra, Located at Sotheby’s, … New York

A manuscript bearing the signature of a famous priest was contained within a collection of documents in the Mexican National Archives (archives) in Mexico City, Mexico. An unknown person removed the manuscript from the collection without permission and sold it at a flea market. The buyer took the manuscript to the United States and eventually sold it to Dana Toft (defendant), who collected valuable documents. Toft met the seller in a hotel room and paid $16,000 for the manuscript. He did not ask for any authentication documents or other proof that the seller rightfully owned the manuscript. Toft decided to auction the manuscript at Sotheby’s auction house in New York. A rare-manuscript dealer notified the archives that the manuscript was for sale, prompting an investigation by the archives’ staff, which determined that the manuscript had been removed from the archives’ collection. As proof that the manuscript belonged to the archives, staff presented a microfilm record of the full collection, showing that the manuscript had been included in the archives’ files. The United States (plaintiff) brought a forfeiture action against Toft in federal court under the Cultural Property Implementation Act, which prohibited the importation into the United States of any cultural property identified as within the inventory of another country’s museums. The United States filed a motion for summary judgment on its forfeiture claim, supporting the motion with the microfilm evidence and expert evidence from an art-fraud specialist who concluded after a comparison of the manuscript and the archives’ microfilm that the manuscript was the same one the archives reported missing. Toft claimed that he was an innocent purchaser of the manuscript, a recognized defense to a forfeiture action.