Legal Cases

IN the week when dealer John Hobbs was due to meet his former restorer a London court, Dreweatts have announced they will be selling his stock at auction in December.

It could be less than a month until the date is named when antiquities dealer Malcolm Hay will be extradited to serve a four-year jail sentence in Greece – on the strength of no credible evidence.

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

IN a confiscation hearing earlier this month, Maurice Taylor, the man jailed last March for three years for selling a fake Lowry painting, was warned that he faced a further ten years in prison unless he paid back almost £1.2m deemed to be the proceeds of fraud.

THE trial of a man accused of the burglary of a number of remote country houses in East Anglia has begun in Ipswich Crown Court.

DISGRACED New York art dealer Lawrence Salander has been jailed for a minimum of six years after pleading guilty to orchestrating one of the world’s biggest ever art frauds.

THE troubled internet entrepreneur and art collector Halsey Minor, who in March was ordered to hand over $6.6m for unpaid items ‘bought’ at Sotheby’s, has won a parallel legal battle with Christie’s.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

SWISS-based animal philanthropist Jeanne Marchig is suing Christie's over the female portrait sold as '19th century German' at Christie's New York in 1998 for $19,500 but now called La Bella Principessa and claimed as a £100m work by Leonardo da Vinci.

Despite recent developments in the case against the notorious Johnson family, including the recovery of stolen antiques in Worcestershire, innumerable valuable works of art remain at large.

WHEN Shropshire auctioneers Mullock’s sold a dealer’s stock for nearly 50 per cent above estimate, they thought that the vendor’s sole reaction would be one of satisfaction. Instead, they found themselves in court and having to pay out hundreds of pounds in compensation and costs.

THE ringleader of the notorious Johnson family gang, who played the key role in a series of audacious thefts at stately homes across the UK, faces an increased prison sentence.

AN American collector who sued Sotheby’s, alleging they concealed a financial interest in, and inflated the price of, a painting that he bought for almost $10m, has lost his case.

EBAY users in the US are questioning the merits of the feedback system after a buyer from Florida who left negative comments for a seller has been hit by a $15,000 lawsuit for defamation.

THE Greek courts have agreed not to pursue dealer Malcolm Hay any further pending his appeal against his conviction for trading in stolen antiquities.

TIFFANY have lost on most counts in their appeal against a ruling in a US federal district court backing eBay over the sale of the firm’s jewellery.

NORTH East auctioneer Jim Railton has been fined £1000 after being charged over the sale of an Edwardian collection of birds’ eggs.

THE Northumberland auctioneer Jim Railton who was charged with offering and advertising 54 wild birds’ eggs for sale, has now been fined £1000 plus costs at Alnwick Magistrates Court.

DISGRACED New York dealer Lawrence Salander, erstwhile co-owner of Manhattan’s Salander-O’Reilly Gallery, has admitted to orchestrating a $120m art fraud.

A VERY Italian tale involving an important collection of papers that once belonged to the ‘father of art history’, Giorgio Vasari, took a new twist last month when a court injunction halted its sale by auction at the eleventh hour.