[MSN] Del. Supreme Court hears appeal in forged painting case. Wilmington couple suing Christie's over faked impressionist work.

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Del. Supreme Court hears appeal in forged painting case
Wilmington couple suing Christie's over faked impressionist work
By RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press
Posted Sunday, April 1, 2007
DOVER -- A Wilmington couple who bought a painting at a Christie's auction
only to find out later that it was a forgery are victims of fraud, their
attorney told the state Supreme Court last week.

Johannes and Betty Krahmer appealed to the Supreme Court last year after a
Chancery Court judge dismissed their 2004 lawsuit against Christie's, saying
the lawsuit was filed too late, and that there was no evidence to infer that
the famed auction house knew the painting was a fake.

"The Krahmers are here because they were defrauded," attorney Victor
Battaglia told the Supreme Court.

Battaglia said that, unlike art professionals, the Krahmers had no reason to
suspect that the painting might be a fake, and that Christie's
representatives were so enthralled with the painting's purported lineage
that they failed to do their job.

"An art professional has a responsibility to examine a painting," Battaglia
argued.

The dispute centers around an oil portrait of a woman that the Krahmers
bought in 1986, thinking it was the 1912 work entitled "Interior" by
American impressionist Frank Weston Benson. They paid $38,500 and received a
six-year limited warranty of authenticity.

In 1999, while attempting to authenticate the painting, the Krahmers applied
to a committee in Boston compiling a definitive list of Benson's works. They
then learned of a similar painting at a Connecticut museum, but initially
were told that Benson may have painted two works depicting the same scene.

In 2002, however, when the Krahmers tried to sell their painting on
consignment to Sotheby's auction house, they were told by a Sotheby's
restorer that it might be a forgery.

The committee in Boston subsequently determined that the Krahmers' painting
was indeed a fake. The committee theorized that the original was acquired
from Benson by the famed Detroit Club in Michigan in 1914, but was sold in
the early 1970s and replaced with a copy, perhaps in the original frame.

The Krahmers asked Christie's to rescind the 1986 sale, but the auction
house refused, saying the six-year warranty of authenticity had expired.
"Six years was a long time ago," Michael Salzman, an attorney representing
Christie's, told the three-judge Supreme Court panel.

Salzman and Battaglia differed on whether Delaware's "time of discovery"
rule, which allows the filing period for a lawsuit to begin when a person
first believes he has been injured, rather than the date of actual injury,
applies to the Krahmers.

http://www.delawareonline.com/