Displaying items by tag: Defendant

Prominent Canadian art collector David Mirvish filed a lawsuit on Friday, February 22, 2013 against the disgraced New York-based art gallery, Knoedler & Company. Since closing its doors in late 2011, Knoedler & Company has been accused by multiple clients of selling forged paintings, which were acquired by the gallery from Long Island dealer Glafira Rosales. Mirvish’s is the fifth lawsuit against Knoedler since 2011.

However, Mirvish’s claim is slightly different than its predecessors. While the other lawsuits accused Knoedler of passing off fake Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), and Mark Rothko (1903-1970) paintings as the real deal, Mirvish claims that the works he purchased from the gallery were authentic. Instead, Mirvish is arguing that he lost out on millions of dollars in profits when Knoedler failed to sell three Jackson Pollock masterpieces he purchased jointly with the gallery.

Between 2002 and 2007 Mirvish purchased two paintings attributed to Pollock and bough a half stake in a third for $1.6 million. The sole purpose of Mirvish’s dealings with Knoedler was to resell the works for a profit. One of the Pollock paintings sold to collector and hedge fund manager Pierre Lagrange for $17 million in 2007, but in 2011, the day before Knoedler shut down, Lagrange announced that he would be filing a lawsuit against the gallery as forensic testing suggested the painting was a fake. The Lagrange suit was eventually settled but Mirvish was not involved and refused to return the money he made off of the deal.

Mirvish is now seeking reparations for the two unsold Pollocks, claiming that Knoedler breached its agreement when the gallery suddenly went out of business. Mirvish is asking Knoedler to return the two paintings, referred to as “Greenish Pollock” and “Square Pollock,” as well as reimburse him for his $1.6 million stake in the third painting, referred to as “Silver Pollock.” Even though Mirvish only paid Knoedler $3.25 million, half of “Greenish Pollock” and “Square Pollock’s” purchase prices, he claims that Knoedler’s violation of contract entitles him to both paintings.

Nicholas Gravante, the lawyer of Knoedler’s former president, Ann Freeman, is representing Mirvish. Freeman is not named as a defendant in Mirvish’s case and she has maintained that all works acquired from Rosales are genuine. Rosales is currently under investigation by the F.B.I.    

In the small 19th-century painting, a young girl is seated in a straight-backed chair, looking forlorn, as if troubled by her role in the strange story of theft and deception that culminated in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday.

It has been a big, if bizarre, year for “Portrait of a Girl,” an oil painting by the French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, which has been valued as high as $1.35 million in recent years. It was an even more eventful year for Thomas Doyle, the Manhattan man who pleaded guilty in July to one count of wire fraud in connection with his deceitful purchase of the painting in 2010.

Mr. Doyle, 54, was sentenced on Monday to six years in prison — twice the sentence stipulated by guidelines relating to his plea bargain.

Judge Colleen McMahon of Federal District Court called the guidelines “manifestly insufficient” in Mr. Doyle’s case, and said she was acting as “an old-fashioned judge” with regard to his sentencing. During an hourlong hearing, she recounted his 11 convictions over the last 34 years — for the theft of items that included a fur coat in the late 1970s and a Degas statue, a crime he pleaded guilty to committing, in 2007, and for which he served two years in prison.

“You are a career criminal by any definition of the term,” the judge sternly told Mr. Doyle, who was dressed in a khaki-colored prison jumpsuit. “Society needs to be protected from you; you are a predator.”

Ms. McMahon outlined Mr. Doyle’s “cockamamie scheme” to swindle an investor interested in buying “Portrait of a Girl,” and alluded to the investor’s lingering financial troubles as a result.