Adjunct Professor Raymond Dowd ’91 was quoted in Variety on the latest prejudgment interest rulings handed down regarding Nazi-looted art. He recently argued in front of the Appellate Court in Manhattan, stating that the current estimate in prejudgment interest in Reif v. Nagy was “too low by half.”
Last week, in a New York courtroom, Dowd was there, as he has been since 2005, fighting for the claims of the Grunbaum Foundation as they try to recover the rights to artworks stolen from Grunbaum and his widow, Lily, more than 80 years ago. Two Schiele works, “Woman in a Black Pinafore” (1911) and “Woman Hiding Her Face” (1912) were ruled to rightfully belong to Grunbaum’s heirs in 2018 and this year they were ruled to have accrued prejudgment interest.
On Nov. 10, in front of the five judges of the Appellate Court in Manhattan, Dowd argued in the case of Reif vs Nagy that the current estimate of $750,000 in prejudgment interest was too low by half, but also pressed the point that the titleholders of the works were continuing to cloud ownership rights to them.
The recent court rulings are critical, says Dowd, because “these victories provide the kind of clarity that museums and art collectors cannot deny.”
In Dowd’s view, the importance of this year’s prejudgment interest ruling in this case can’t be overstated. “This is the first application of prejudgment interest in the art world,” explains Dowd, “which means the interest clock starts ticking after a legal demand and refusal process has been undertaken. This is a pressure point and one of many we now have. There is also the court of public opinion and there is a ground war at the board level of museums. You have trustees speaking out and saying, ‘We don’t want to be associated with this kind of activity.’”