Editorial: Decades after Nazis stole Pissarro painting, California may help it return

Within the twists and turns that an beautiful Impressionist portray of a wet Paris streetscape has taken from Lilly Cassirer’s Berlin dwelling in 1939 to the wall of a Spanish museum the place it hangs at this time, nobody has ever questioned that the paintings was stolen by the Nazis.

But, her descendants, now dwelling in California, haven’t been in a position to get it again.

Lastly, after twenty years of preventing in court docket from California to the U.S. Supreme Court docket, a invoice within the state Legislature might give the Cassirer household the most effective likelihood but of successful again the Camille Pissarro portray, “Rue Saint-Honoré, après midi, effet de pluie,” which the Nazis compelled Lilly to surrender in change for exit papers out of Germany.

Meeting Invoice 2867, authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) and sponsored by California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, would mandate that each one court docket circumstances filed by California residents or their households to get well their stolen artwork held by museums be adjudicated in accordance with state regulation. Below California regulation, a thief has no authorized proper to stolen property and subsequently can not go official title to others regardless of what number of instances the property is bought or how a lot time passes.

Gabriel and Kounalakis understand how laborious it’s to seek out and retrieve property stolen in the course of the Holocaust. Gabriel, an legal professional, has represented Holocaust victims, and Kounalakis was beforehand ambassador to Hungary, a rustic that despatched greater than half a million Jewish folks to their deaths.

This morally compelling invoice solves a glitch that had stymied the Cassirer household’s case. At the moment, courts deciding a case in a state the place the plaintiff is suing a overseas entity (just like the Spanish museum) are required to decide whether or not to use that state’s regulation or the regulation of the defendant’s nation. Within the Cassirer case, federal courts all the time determined to use Spanish regulation. And in Spain, the holder of stolen property has the appropriate to maintain it after a sure time frame passes — even if it was stolen.

Below these guidelines, the Cassirer household misplaced in federal district court docket, the ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals, and — after the U.S. Supreme Court docket despatched the case again to the appellate court docket in 2022 — once more within the appellate court docket. Earlier this 12 months, a panel of the ninth Circuit utilized Spanish regulation and ruled that the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid had the appropriate to maintain the portray. If the invoice passes, the Cassirer household can return to the ninth Circuit primarily based on the brand new regulation or they will enchantment the ninth Circuit’s current decision to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.

It doesn’t matter what regulation was utilized, it’s outrageous that the museum has stored it. Even a concurring decide on the ninth Circuit mentioned the museum ought to give it again to the Cassirer household.

This invoice will ship a transparent message from the folks of California to all courts— in addition to the federal government of Spain — that museums shouldn’t have any proper to carry stolen artwork. The Legislature ought to go this shortly and Gov. Gavin Newsom ought to signal it into regulation as quickly because it passes. The invoice has an urgency clause, which means it would go into impact instantly after the governor indicators it into regulation.