Foreign affairs doctrine

• Author: International Law Group, PLLC
• Pages: 123-124

Page 123

Marei von Saher (Plaintiff) brought a claim against the Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena under the time limits of §354.3 for the return of a diptych which the Nazis had looted during World War II.

Plaintiff is the only surviving heir of Jacques Goudstikker, a deceased Dutch art dealer who once had a collection of over 1,500 valuable paintings. She filed this suit in 2007 against the Defendant under § 354.3 and California Penal Code § 496, seeking the return of a diptych entitled "Adam and Eve." The diptych is a pair of oil paintings by sixteenth-century master Lucas Cranach the Elder (hereinafter the "Cranachs"). It is currently on public display at the Defendant. Goudstikker bought the Cranachs at a Berlin art auction in May 1931.

When the German army invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Goudstikker and his family fled. The Nazis looted Goudstikker's gallery, and sent the artwork to the country estate of Reichsmarschall Herman Göring located near Berlin. The collection remained there until about May 1945, when Allied Forces found it. They sent the collection to the Munich Central Collection Point, where experts identified the works as from the Goudstikker collection.

In 1946, the Allied Forces returned the Goudstikker artworks to the Netherlands government. It somehow failed to return the Cranachs, however, to the Goudstikker family. After restitution proceedings in the Netherlands, the Dutch government delivered the Cranachs to a George Stroganoff, one of the claimants, and he sold them to the Defendant.

The Defendant filed a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss Plaintiff's complaint. The district court granted the motion. It held that § 354's extension of the statute of limitations was unconstitutional on its face, because it violated the foreign affairs doctrine, as interpreted and applied by the Ninth Circuit in Deutsch v. Turner, 324 F.3d 692 (9th Cir. 2005). Though the California Statute does seek to redress wrongs committed in the course of World War II, such matters fall within the federal government's exclusive power to wage war, including the procedure for resolving postwar claims. Moreover, Plaintiff did not file her complaint within the three-year period of California's regular statute of limitations. She appealed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reverses and remands.

"The Supreme Court has characterized the power to deal with foreign affairs as a primarily, if not exclusively, federal power. See...