Article on the New HEAR Act

Amelia K. Brankov & Lily Landsman-Roos recently published an Article entitled, Congress Passes Important Law Governing Nazi-Looted Art Claims, Tr. & Est. 62 (March 2017). Provided below is an abstract of the Article:

A new law signed by former President Obama on Dec. 16, 2016 addresses the Nazis’ theft of hundreds of thousands of artworks, an event that Congress has called “the ‘greatest displacement of art in human history.’” That law, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2016, establishes a uniform, federal statute of limitations (SOL) for claims seeking the recovery of artwork and certain other objects that were confiscated by the Nazis. Now, these claims may be brought within six years of the claimant’s actual discovery of facts giving rise to the claim (including the whereabouts of the object). Before the HEAR Act, the timeliness of such claims was governed by generally more restrictive state laws, which varied from state to state, leading to costly choice-of-law battles, unpredictability and rulings barring meritorious claims. The new statute, which is a sea change in the law applying to Holocaust recovery claims, is expected to alleviate these concerns in ongoing and future disputes.