Orkin v. Taylor Oral Argument

The Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals heard oral argument in Orkin et al. v. Taylor. A lower court dismissed the Orkin family’s claim to a painting in the possession of actress Elizabeth Taylor on the grounds that the California three-year statute of limitations had run out. Elizabeth Taylor bought the painting in 1963 at Sotheby’s auction house in London, believing the artwork belonged to another German Jew, Alfred Wolf. Four descendants of the late Margarete Mauthner sued seeking to claim the Van Gogh painting, “View of the Asylum and Chapel at St. Remy,” lost when she fled Nazi Germany in 1939. The plaintiffs claimed that Ms. Taylor should return the painting under the Holocaust Victims Redress Act, the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, and other “judicially formulated policies that encourage prospective buyers of artworks on the international market” to take precautions against acquiring Nazi-confiscated and other stolen materials. close