Category: Articles – Brothers in Law

Our teenage friend Jay is a renowned amateur birder whose feathers aren’t easily ruffled. Still, he was dismayed to spot an unflattering picture of himself taken without his parents’ permission and posted online by a fledgling rival. Worse, other birders were flocking to the rival’s website to purchase posters of the offending photo. Our young pal had cried foul, and his mother, Robin, was itching to sue. She phoned us to see if they had a case. Continue reading “Brothers in Law: A Photographer’s Artistic Freedom v. an Individual’s Rights to Privacy”

We received the penned note from Miranda at the end of a punishing day. It was just two sentences long, but it raised a slew of legal issues and a few other concerns. “I am about to commission a sculpture of my husband, Carlo, for a 10-year anniversary,” she wrote. “Anything I should consider?” We didn’t know Miranda but were happy to assist. Continue reading “Satisfaction Guaranteed: Brothers in Law on Commissioning a Work of Art”

Ashley was passionate about Conceptual art, but her pyromaniacal son had a different burning enthusiasm. After the firemen left, our client discovered that the extensive documentation on her collection had gone up in flames. A smoking mad Ashley phoned us with heated questions early the next day.

“Since Conceptual art is all about the idea being expressed in an artwork rather than its physical form, what exactly did my idiot son lose in the blaze?” Continue reading “Brothers in Law: When Conceptual Art Certificates of Authenticity Go Up in Smoke”

It’s possible that our client Boris was, as he claimed, just a small-time florist from Moscow—but we had our suspicions. How many Russian florists own a Gulfstream G650? Boris also had a thorny legal problem: His insurance company had just determined that five expensive paintings he had bought from Madame Chardon, an elderly French dealer, might be fakes. Continue reading “Brothers in Law: What’s in a Name?: Legal Options When Authenticity is Challenged”

All is not cool in California. The state’s Resale Royalty Act, which gave artists or their agents (including their heirs) a 5 percent royalty on any resale of their art over $1,000 if the seller resided in California or the transaction took place there, was struck down by a federal court in 2012. The law was both welcomed and reviled, depending on whom you asked: Proponents claimed the law gave much-deserved compensation to artists for their efforts, especially for work bought cheaply and later sold at a big profit; critics countered that artists did not deserve special treatment and that the law put a damper on the art market while benefiting successful artists who didn’t need help. The gulf between these two views was—and remains—as wide as the Pacific. Continue reading “Brothers In Law: Royalty Pains”