Raymond Dowd ’91 was quoted in New York Law Journal on the recent prejudgment interest ruling handed down regarding Nazi-looted art.
The amount of interest owed on the paintings, according to Raymond Dowd, the lawyer for plaintiff heirs in the long-running case, is $1,432,267, which he said represents more than a third of the paintings’ last-estimated total value in 2018 of $3.4 million. The court, though, has yet to rule on the exact amount of prejudgment interest owed.
Dowd, a Manhattan-based partner at Dunnington Bartholow & Miller and a longtime art law practitioner, says he believes the prejudgment interest ruling handed down this week by Justice Andrew Borrok will trigger a “sea change” in the increasingly prevalent and heated litigations in the U.S. and Europe over possession of allegedly Nazi-looted art. Before Borrok’s ruling, he said, there had been little-to-no ”financial downside” when art dealers and museums that had wrongfully possessed looted art chose to keep fighting their cases in court, via appeals and sometimes regarding lesser issues, such as interest, even after they’d lost the possession cases on the merits.