Legal Cases

THE Northumberland auctioneer Jim Railton who was charged with offering and advertising 54 wild birds’ eggs for sale, has now been fined £1000 plus costs at Alnwick Magistrates Court.

DISGRACED New York dealer Lawrence Salander, erstwhile co-owner of Manhattan’s Salander-O’Reilly Gallery, has admitted to orchestrating a $120m art fraud.

A VERY Italian tale involving an important collection of papers that once belonged to the ‘father of art history’, Giorgio Vasari, took a new twist last month when a court injunction halted its sale by auction at the eleventh hour.

ONE of the North East’s best-known auctioneers faces a substantial fine and a possible prison sentence after being charged over the sale of an Edwardian collection of birds’ eggs.

AS court proceedings draw closer, Christie’s have upped their long-running damages claim against Artprice from 2m euros to a hefty 63m euros. The auction house originally filed the suit against the French art database in 2008, saying that the reproduction of e-catalogues on their website constitutes copyright and trademark infringement.

A DEALER who says his career has been ruined by trumped-up charges in the Greek courts has been arrested again – even though he is currently appealing against the conviction and three-year jail sentence.

EBAY’s legal fortunes continue to seesaw, with a Paris court ordering them to pay 230,000 euros to Louis Vuitton Malletier in costs and damages.

A MAN arrested in connection with passing fraudulent cheques to London dealers has appeared in court.

POLICE are in the process of returning £500,000 worth of antiques after a serial conwoman received a confiscation order earlier this month.

MARK Law, the former chairman of Partridge Fine Art, has issued a statement confirming his intent to sue the previous owners of the Bond Street dealership for the money he has laid out for the purchase of the firm since 2005.

THE extraordinary saga over Partridge Fine Art has taken another twist with a legal row over claims of long-term systematic fraud and faking by the Bond Street dealership.

THE Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA) and Oxfam have come to an agreement in their dispute over how the charity is affecting the secondhand book market.

UK museums whose own rules prevent them from returning Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners can now do so thanks to a new Act of Parliament.

ROYAL Mail have lost another court case over their promise to cover losses under their special delivery services, and face further legal action. Yet they will still not change the terms and conditions that landed them in court.

AUCTIONEERS and trade associations sharing information on undesirable clients have to be careful that they are not breaking the law.

MORE than a year after his county court victory against Royal Mail, coins and banknotes dealer Bruce Goulborn is taking them to court again.

A long-running complaint brought against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts by the owner of a work twice denied by their authentication board has been granted class action status.

A LENGTHY police investigation has led to the jailing of a retired solicitor, convicted on charges linked to money laundering and efforts to sell a stolen £500,000 painting.

A DISPUTE between Lord Lloyd Webber and the HM Revenue and Customs over the purchase, with the aid of taxpayers' money, of J.W. Waterhouse's St Cecilia by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, has been settled out of court.

CHRISTIE’S have launched legal action against US Internet entrepreneur Halsey Minor. Minor took Christie’s to court last December, accusing the auction house of fraud and a number of other torts after pictures he consigned to Christie’s dealership Haunch of Venison in May 2008 were not returned “in a timely fashion” when they failed to sell.