Court Will Review Whether Spain Can Be Sued Over Art Nazis Took

A ruling that Spain can be sued in the U.S. by a California man seeking to recover a Pissarro painting stolen by the Nazis from his grandmother will be reconsidered, a federal appeals court in San Francisco said.

The court today set aside a September ruling by three of its judges who said that Spain, which acquired the painting in 1993, can be sued even though the work was stolen by Germany. The case will be reheard by a larger panel of judges, the court said today. It didn’t give a reason for the decision.

Claude Cassirer sued Spain and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation four years ago to recover the painting by French impressionist Camille Pissarro. The painting of Rue Saint-Honore in Paris was bought by Cassirer’s great- grandfather, who belonged to a wealthy Jewish family, in 1898. When his grandmother fled Germany in 1939, she was forced to surrender the painting, according to court records.

A three-judge panel ruled in September that Spain isn’t immune from the case under a U.S. law that shields foreign countries from lawsuits filed in the states. The law contains an exception for illegally expropriated property even if the country being sued hasn’t broken the law, the court said.

After the war, the painting was sold at least three times before ending up with the collection of Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, which is housed in Madrid.

The case is Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain, 06-56325, U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (San Francisco).

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in Chicago at kgullo@bloomberg.net.

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