Last month, a New York court dismissed a lawsuit by the former president of the board of directors of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, in a case focused on allegations of misconduct and self-dealing by the Foundation’s board members.  The court did not substantively analyze the merits of the plaintiff’s claims, but the case highlights the importance of clear and thoughtful governance procedures and standards for art-related not-for-profit organizations.

​After more than four years of litigation, a federal judge has delivered our team a total victory, ruling that our client holds full title to the multimillion-dollar Basquiat painting at the center of disgraced art dealer Inigo Philbrick’s massive fraud.  

A recent dispute over a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album highlights some of the potential challenges inherent in ownership of digital art.  The suit was initiated by PleasrDAO, an international entity that collects important works of digital media, against disgraced former American pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli.

A recent federal court decision illustrates some of the challenges inherent in commissioning outdoor environmental artwork; the difficulties parties face in making sure that both the art and their contracts will withstand the test of time; and the limitations of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA).

In a move that may cause ripples in the competitive art world, the Federal Trade Commission recently issued a final rule that, if it goes into effect as planned later this year, will ban most forms of non-compete agreements between employers and employees. 

A years-long dispute over an alleged “Rothko” forgery has culminated in a total victory for our client, a distinguished New York art dealer.

Last week, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Department, issued a unanimous 5-0 decision reversing the trial court’s denial of summary judgment and handing Grossman LLP a total win for its clients in a real-estate litigation that had been pending for over 10 years.

We have written before about the many legal questions raised by new and rapidly-proliferating artificial intelligence technology.  In recent weeks, there have been significant developments in AI-related litigation across the country.  As the new year began, the New York Times instituted a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement of its news content by ChatGPT.  In February, a federal judge trimmed the scope of a group of lawsuits challenging the use of books to “train” AI.  And multiple competing class actions are jostling to determine which one will proceed first.  These lawsuits promise to raise difficult questions about how our existing copyright regime should apply to the brave new world of content generated by AI. 

 

This past year was an exciting one for Grossman LLP, as we continue to build on more than a decade of groundbreaking litigation in the art-law arena.

Grossman LLP associate Maria Angela Brusco recently spoke on a panel at the Art Law Institute of the New York County Lawyers’ Association (NYCLA), focusing on the legal implications of collectors’ promises to make gifts of artworks in the future.  Below, she summarizes some key insights from the event.

In June of 2022, on the shore of Lake Michigan, a fire destroyed the lake house of hedge fund founder Matthew Halbower and his wife Julie.  Now, in a lawsuit pending in federal court, the family’s trust seeks an insurance payout for several valuable artworks destroyed in the fire, including four Monet paintings.  The case highlights the complexity of insurance disputes involving fine art.

The Grossman team has won a total victory dismissing all counterclaims in our suit on behalf of a prominent art collector against an art gallery for refusing to rescind a sale of paintings that turned out to be forgeries.

The evolution and rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (“AI”) is transforming many industries, but courts are just starting to examine how AI interacts with existing copyright law governing artistic works.  In a groundbreaking new case handed down this summer, a federal court has now ruled that an artwork wholly generated by AI is ineligible for copyright protection.

Artist Maurizio Cattelan arguably created the most talked-about work at Art Basel Miami in 2019.  But in 2020, fellow visual and conceptual artist Joe Morford sued Cattelan for copyright infringement, alleging that Cattelan’s work, Comedian—which consisted of a banana duct-taped to a wall—unfairly copies one of Morford’s creations, a piece titled Banana and Orange.  This summer, a Florida federal court rejected Morford’s claims, holding on summary judgment that the two works are not “substantially similar” enough to support an infringement claim. 

Three visual artists have sued the ultra-fast-fashion behemoth Shein for copyright infringement, alleging that Shein operates a wide-ranging scheme that relies on artificial intelligence, deliberate copyright infringement, and a hope that none of the artists will notice.

Two copyright lawsuits against appropriation artist Richard Prince arising out of his controversial “New Portraits” artworks have cleared a major hurdle—summary judgment—and appear to be headed for trial.  In a decision issued in May (just days before the Supreme Court issued its Warhol ruling), a federal judge rejected Prince’s fair use defense.

In late May, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in the case of Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith.  The case sought to provide clarity on the thorny concept of “fair use” in copyright law.  In particular, it focused on how courts should evaluate the “purpose and character” of an artist’s use of someone else’s creations, and the role of “transformativity” in that evaluation.  The resulting decision is, in some ways, limited in scope, but in other respects, it raises new questions for artists who borrow from the work of others. 

Grossman LLP has secured summary judgment dismissing a former hedge-fund billionaire’s claims that our client issued a usurious loan.

Earlier this year, we wrote about some of the NFT-related litigation working its way through courts around the country.  Recently, one of those cases culminated in a substantial win for Yuga Labs, creator of the famous “Bored Ape Yacht Club” NFT collection. 

The Second Circuit recently affirmed the dismissal of a fraud claim by a buyer who bought an artwork in 1985 and had it appraised on several occasions beginning in 2007, but did not sue until after the work was deemed inauthentic in 2018.  The case focused on the work’s exclusion from the artist’s catalogue raisonné; the appraisals all expressly noted that the work’s authenticity was only “assumed” because the painting was not in the artist’s catalogue.  The court reasoned that in light of such a disclaimer, a reasonable person should have further investigated its authenticity, and therefore the fraud claim’s two-year statute of limitations began to run at that time.