Legal Cases

Christie’s have joined auctioneers William J. Jenack in a bid to overturn a legal ruling that says New York salerooms must reveal consignors’ names to buyers.

Three men charged in connection with a series of burglaries involving auction houses in the South of England will appear at crown court in January.

Malcolm Hay, the dealer controversially convicted by an Athens court of trading in illegally excavated antiquities, has learnt that the hearing of the appeal he lodged in March 2011 has been delayed until February 1, 2013 owing to disruption caused by strikes in Greece.

Three men have been jailed for a total of 18 years for their involvement in the theft of Chinese artefacts from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Two men have been jailed for a string of burglaries across the South East which included taking a rhino head from Haslemere Museum in Surrey.

Several items stolen from Derby Museum and Art Gallery’s storage facility have been recovered and two arrests have been made.

Two men have been charged with theft after Henry Moore’s ‘Working Model for Sundial 1965’ sculpture and a bronze plinth were stolen from his former home.

Four suspected thieves were due to appear in court in connection with a series of burglaries at six auction houses in the south of England last year.

A federal judge has declared the 1977 California Resale Royalty Act unconstitutional.

The English Supreme Court has ruled that expert witnesses will no longer enjoy immunity from civil lawsuits when giving evidence in either civil or criminal legal proceedings.

Comment: Nicholas Somers, FNAVA. FRSA.

One of the UK’s most prolific and accomplished art fraudsters has been jailed for two years after admitting he created up to 1000 forgeries.

Two suspects have been charged in connection with the theft of 18 Chinese hardstone carvings worth millions of pounds from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on April 13.

CREDIT card fraud affecting auction houses and dealers is on the increase all over the country, say the police.

The subject of a recent BBC documentary regarding county court judgments, the Midgham firm of fine art auctioneers and valuers are also the subject of non-payment claims and other complaints.

CHRISTIE’S South Kensington has been forced to postpone their sale of the Raglan Collection at the 11th hour after a legal dispute over the estate resulted in a court injunction.

FOUR people will appear in court next month in connection with a series of frauds involving foreign-based credit cards used to pay for high-value jewellery at a number of auction houses.

THE High Court has ruled that Sotheby’s were not negligent in cataloguing and valuing a judge’s gold chain of office as late 17th century rather than a spectacularly rare survivor from Tudor times.

THE recovery of more than 400 lost works by Dutch artist Karel Appel has led to a call for storage companies to tighten their due diligence on objects they handle.

NASA are trying to play down news of a row with Apollo astronauts over the sale of artefacts from the space programme dating back to the 1960s and ‘70s.