Cassirer’s Case Continues

 

Camille Pissarro, Rue Saint-Honoré,

dans l’après-midi. Effet de pluie.

Regular TLB readers will be familiar with David Cassirer’s long-running suit to recover a painting by Camille Pissarro, which the Nazis stole from his great-grandmother, from a museum owned by the government of Spain. The case turns on choice of law. Under Spanish law, an owner acquires good title through possession for a period of years even if the property was stolen. Under California law, thieves cannot pass good title, which means that the museum could not acquire it.

In 2022, the Supreme Court held that the Ninth Circuit erred in applying federal choice-of-law rules to decide that Spanish law governed the case. Federal courts must apply state choice-of-law rules, the Court held, even in cases against foreign states brought under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. On remand, the Ninth Circuit applied California’s choice-of-law rules and, in a rather dubious decision, held that Spanish law still governed and that under Spanish law the museum owned the painting.

At this point, the California legislature intervened, passing a bill requiring courts to apply California law to claims brought by a California resident involving the theft of art or other personal property during the Holocaust or other political persecutions. The new law applies to all pending actions, including those in which the Supreme Court has not yet denied a petition for certiorari.

Cassirer filed a petition for cert, asking the Supreme Court to GVR (grant the petition, vacate the decision, and remand the case) to the Ninth Circuit for further consideration of the case in light of the new law. On Monday, March 10, 2025, the Supreme Court did just that.

Spain will almost certainly challenge the validity of the new law on remand. But, as I have noted before, when a state legislature directs that its law must be applied in a certain class of cases, courts are generally required to follow that direction.