Court Determines If Claimants Were Entitled to Such Extraordinary Relief
Mordechai Avni, Oded Avni and Michaela Iro demanded that Sotheby’s return a painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. They claimed they were all lawful heirs of Dr. Otto and Lili Fröhlich, who owned the painting prior to World War II. The Avnis asserted that the Nazis stole the painting and they filed a petition for pre-action discovery of the individual who acquired the painting from Sotheby’s after an auction. The Avnis contended that Sotheby’s was the last known possessor of the painting and that it was put up for sale at public auction in New York on May 22, 2019.
The Avnis detailed that the Fröhlichs resided in Austria and ran an art gallery there before they were forced to flee in 1938 and left for London. They explained that, during the late 1930s, the Nazis forbade Jews from engaging in any business activities and forced them to sell assets, often at below-market prices for the benefit of non-Jewish sellers and buyers, as well as the Nazi government. In many of those deals, the Jewish owner received nothing.
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