Case Review: Bennigson v. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

March 13, 2026

Picasso, Woman Ironing, 1904, Guggenheim, New York

By Lauren Stein and Donyea James

On December 16, 2016, the outgoing president Barack Obama signed into law the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act.^[1] The Act was “created to revive claims otherwise barred by the statute of limitations so that victims of the Holocaust atrocities and their heirs could seek justice and recovery of the property from which they were unlawfully and inhumanely separated.”^[2] By establishing a uniform federal statute, the HEAR Act sought to ensure that claims to Holocaust-era art sales would be resolved on their merits rather than dismissed on procedural grounds.^[3]

In the years following the HEAR Act’s passage, the number of restitution and recovery claims has grown, as heirs and claimants have renewed efforts to investigate provenance and pursue legal remedies in courts.^[4] Museums and collectors have increasingly found themselves defendants in high-profile lawsuits involving works that have been publicly displayed and owned for decades. These cases raise complex questions about good-faith purchasers and the passage of time. Against this backdrop, the Bennigson v. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation case provides a telling example of how courts define when the HEAR Act is applicable, and the legal challenges that shape art litigation.

Facts of the Case

In 1916, Mr. Karl Adler, a German-Jewish businessman, purchased 1904 painting, Woman Ironing (La rapasseuse) by Picasso, from the Thannhauser Galerie, a prominent Munich-based modern art gallery owned by Jewish art dealer Heinrich Thannhauser (1859–1935).^[5] At the time of the purchase, Adler was an executive in his family’s leather manufacturing company, Adler and Oppenheimer A.G. (A&O).^[6] Although Adler explored selling the painting in 1932, seeking at least $12,000, he ultimately retained ownership and continued to hold the work for several more years.^[7]

By the mid-to-late 1930s, Adler’s circumstances had changed dramatically. As a Jewish executive in Nazi Germany, he faced mounting economic, legal, and professional pressures, pursuant to discriminatory laws. The family decided to flee Germany. In December 1936, the German government imposed a compulsory flight tax security payment on Karl and his wife, Rosa Adler, a financial burden imposed on Jews seeking to emigrate.^[8] Adler paid this obligation in May 1938 by selling securities.^[9] Around December 1937, he was forced to relinquish his board position at A&O, further undermining his financial security and professional standing.^[10]

In approximately June 1938, the Adlers fled Germany in an effort to escape persecution and to secure a permanent visa to Argentina.^[11] While awaiting permission to enter Argentina, Adler experienced significant financial constraints and lacked sufficient funds to cover his anticipated relocation and living costs. In order to gain funds, on October 29, 1938, Karl Adler sold Woman Ironing to Justin K. Thannhauser, the son of Heinrich Thannhauser (1892–1976).^[12] Karl sold the painting for $1,552, an amount alleged to be substantially below market value and less than one-ninth of the price Adler sought in 1932.^[13] At the time of sale, Justin Thannhauser (hereinafter referred to as Thannhauser) had also fled Germany, was residing in Paris.^[14]

From February through April 1939, Woman Ironing was on loan with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.^[15] Later that same year, the painting was again loaned, this time to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.^[16] In October 1939, the painting was shipped to New York, marking its permanent relocation to the United States. Justin Thannhauser subsequently immigrated to the United States in 1940.^[17] No evidence exists of Thannhauser son and Karl Adler resuming correspondence after the war. Shortly after the war, Karl’s wife died in Buenos Aires, and he returned to his home in Germany, where he died in 1957.

In October 1963, Justin Thannhauser informed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation of his intention to bequeath his art collection to the museum upon his death.^[18] On October 24, 1963, The New York Times published a full-page article announcing the planned bequest, prominently featuring a photo of Woman Ironing, along with identifying a Mr. Thannhauser as the donor.^[19] Following Thannhauser’s death in 1976, the Guggenheim accepted possession of the painting as part of the Thannhauser bequest.

Two years earlier, in September 1974, as part of a provenance review, the Guggenheim contacted Eric Adler, the eldest son of Adler, both deceased, to confirm the painting’s ownership history.^[20] Eric Adler indicated that the painting was in his parents collection and they sold it 1939.^[21] The Guggenheim researcher involved in the inquiry and Thannhauser both passed away in late 1976.^[22] Adlers’ children died in the years that followed, between 1989 and 1994.^[23] Throughout this period and for decades thereafter, the painting remained publicly displayed.

In November 2013, plaintiff Thomas Bennigson first learned he might have a potential possessory interest in the painting and retained counsel to investigate the matter.^[24] Plaintiffs’ counsel contacted the Guggenheim on January 24, 2017, and on June 10, 2021, formally demanded the painting’s return.^[25] The lawsuit was ultimately filed approximately eighty years after the 1938 sale, forty years after the Guggenheim accessioned the painting, and several years after the enactment of the HEAR Act.

Plaintiff Complaint

Plaintiffs’ amended complaint alleges that: (1) Thannhauser was aware of the Adlers’ plight; (2) Adler would not have sold the painting for such a low price without Nazi persecution; and (3) Thannhauser purchased art from other German Jews fleeing and “profiting from their misfortune.”^[26] The amended complaint does not state that Eric Adler failed to take action, or that the Guggenheim tried to conceal provenance. Additionally, the complaint does not allege that Thannhausers were involved with or related to the Nazis in any way. The plaintiffs argued causes of action for replevin, conversion, unjust enrichment, and declaratory judgment.^[27]

Decision

The 2024 New York Supreme Court held that laches was established as a matter of law and dismissal was required.^[28] The court also held the case required dismissal based on a failure to allege actionable duress under New York law.^[29]

Laches

Laches is a “doctrine in equity whereby courts can deny relief to a claimant with an otherwise valid claim when the party bringing the claim unreasonably delayed asserting the claim to the detriment of the opposing party.”^[30] Courts have held that laches is appropriate where delay results in “deceased witnesses, faded memories, lost documents, hearsay testimony of questionable value,” which can make it fundamentally unfair to require a defendant to litigate decades later.^[31] Importantly, laches may be resolved as a matter of law, and the HEAR act does not interfere with the application of equitable defenses such as laches.^[32]

Applying these principles, the court concluded the plaintiffs unreasonably delayed in asserting their claim. More than eighty years had elapsed since the sale of Woman Ironing to Thannhauser, and forty-seven years had elapsed since the Guggenheim contacted Eric Adler to verify the painting’s provenance.^[33] Notably, in his response to the Guggenheim, Eric Adler did not allege the painting was sold under duress or suggest “anything remotely untoward about its disposition or otherwise make demand for its return.”^[34] Eric Adler only asked how the Guggenheim had located him; the amended complaint does not allege that Eric Adler “took any actions to recover [Woman Ironing] at any point in his life . . . .”^[35]

Moreover, the painting had been publicly displayed at major museums for decades and featured in widely-circulated publications. Against this backdrop, the court found the plaintiffs’ failure to investigate or pursue their alleged possessory interest earlier reflected a lack of diligence, weighing heavily in favor of dismissal under the doctrine of laches.^[36]

Economic Duress

In New York, a contract may be voided on grounds of economic duress where the complaining party was compelled to agree to its terms by means of (i) a wrongful threat which (ii) precluded the exercise of its free will.^[37] Importantly, the alleged threat or wrongful action must come from one of the parties to the transaction; general economic hardship or external pressures, standing alone, are insufficient to establish economic duress.^[38] Unlike in The Man in the High Castle, an Amazon Prime Video original series, however, New York neither has had to deal with people being forced to part with their last property in an unlikely effort to flee for their lives, after having been dispossessed homes and ability to make a living, in the process of annihilation of a people on a continent.

Applying this standard, and not sale under duress as applies to Nazi-era looting, New York County Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs failed to establish economic duress in connection with the sale of Woman Ironing. Specifically, the court found no evidence that Thannhauser was a Nazi, collaborated with the Nazis, or was associated with the Nazis in any way. Although Adler undoubtedly faced most severe economic pressure as Jewish man fleeing Nazi Germany and bearing responsibility for his family, such generalized pressures, according to court, were not sufficient to prove economic duress when Thannhauser played no part in producing them. The court did not apply unconscionability analysis, where terms of contracts are shockingly unfair. Thus, as a matter of law according to the lower court, the broader economic coercion of the Nazi regime was insufficient to render the transaction improper for economic duress.

Third-Party Duress

Plaintiffs’ also argue that dismissal is not appropriate because the claims are predicated on a theory of third-party distress.^[39] Plaintiffs relied primarily on Sherman v. Sherman, where a court annulled a marriage because the plaintiff was threatened with loss of life and imprisonment if he did not marry the defendant “then and there.”^[40] The court notes the differences between Sherman and the current case, because the complaint does not contain “allegations of a similar nexus between [Adler’s] decision to sell the Painting . . . at that time or at the price that he sold it, any direct consequence had he chosen not to do so, and/or J. Thannhauser’s knowledge of any such consequences.”^[41]

The plaintiffs allege there was a “coercive environment created by Nazi [Germany]” and Thannhauser took advantage.^[42] The court also notes that prior case law establishes that although “third-party duress may render a contract voidable, it cannot do so where the other contracting party gives value to the contract.”^[43] Thus, there is no support for third-party duress because the complaint does not allege Adler was in contact with the Nazis in regard to the sale of the painting, and Thannhauser gave value to the painting of $1,552, when he purchased it.^[44] Lastly, according to the court “nothing was threatened that would happen specifically if Adler refused to sell the Painting to Thannhauser when he did or at the price he did either by the Nazis or anyone collaborating with the Nazis.”^[45] Ipse dixit offered as legal reasoning.

2025 Update

After the New York Supreme Court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs filed an appeal, arguing that the trial court erred in holding (1) that the HEAR Act allows the defendant to present the equitable defense of laches; (2) that the court may dismiss the plaintiff’s claims, deciding on defendant’s defense of laches as a matter of law; (3) that under New York law, the circumstances in the plaintiff’s complaint do not allow for a finding of duress; and (4) that disallowing Holocaust-era claims to proceed contravenes public policy.^[46]

The plaintiffs argued that the HEAR Act, as well as Supreme Court precedent, clearly preempts laches from barring claims that are “timely under a statute of limitations enacted by Congress,” despite the lower court’s analysis.^[47] In particular, plaintiffs contend that the HEAR Act does not include an express provision to allow the laches defense, nor did the Act’s legislative history indicate Congress’s wish to allow for the use of the defense, and to interpret the opposite would be in direct contravention with “Congress’ clear purpose” for the Act.^[48] The plaintiffs also attempt to rebut the laches defense, contending that an “85-year delay” is an inaccurate portrayal of the circumstances of the complaint.^[49] Citing the First Department’s previous decision in In re Estate of Stettiner, where the Court wrote that “a resolution was not possible until a combination of scholarship and technology allowed for the creation of databases compiling lists of missing works, and until nations agreed to international guidelines on art restitution . . .,” that until the Tezerin Declaration in 2009, “duress was not considered a type of Nazi confiscation,” and that the HEAR Act was not passed until 2016, the plaintiffs contend that their ancestor was ignorant of his rights and laches therefore cannot exist.^[50]

Regarding their claim of duress, the plaintiffs also argue that the lower court improperly interpreted and applied New York Law. The lower court, construing the state law to find that “[d]irect involvement of the Nazi regime is necessary to support the finding of distress” to find a sale is void, according to the plaintiffs, was in contravention of the common law.^[51]

The Appellate’s Court Decision

In a three-page opinion, the appellate court unanimously affirmed the lower court’s judgment.^[52] Regarding the plaintiffs’ contention that the lower court erroneously admitted the defendant’s equitable defense of laches under the HEAR Act, the appellate court rebuts the assertion.^[53] The question of what is the correct interpretation of the HEAR Act was answered by the Second Circuit in Zuckerman v. Metropolitan Museum of Art, which “correctly conclud[ed] that laches is not preempted” automatically.^[54] Furthermore, the Court reaffirms that the barring of plaintiffs’ claims as a matter of law was appropriate.^[55] Because the Adlers’ children did not raise concerns, grandchildren have no more relevant information than was had by those who died, the appellate court held that the facts and circumstances satisfy the elements of a defense of laches.^[56] Additionally, the appellate court affirmed the lower court’s application of New York law.^[57] The plaintiffs’ delay, therefore, could be viewed as the ratification of the contract, and “their argument about duress is academic..”^[58] Both courts ignored the fact that the painting was never sold by Thannhauser, a decision that could suggest his own ambivalence about the circumstances of acquisition in 1938, as well as Eric’s erroneous assertion that the painting was sold in 1939 by his parents in anticipation of escaping Europe alive.

Conclusion

The prime points of contention in Nazi-era looted art disputes are (1) the concept of sales “under duress” and (2) the equitable defense of laches. Despite the passage of the HEAR Act offering plaintiffs a private right of action in bringing suits against institutions for conversion or replevin, litigation is still a contentious arena. Courts, like in the present case, are expecting plaintiffs to provide the appropriate and complete factual context to demonstrate duress and defeat the laches defense, which plaintiffs may consider difficult, considering the tort in question took place over 80 years ago. While it may seem counterintuitive to allow defendants to raise a defense of prejudice due to a plaintiff’s undue delay, it does not mean that every claim is automatically barred. The emphasis that the trial and appellate courts attempt to elevate is that deciding on laches and duress as a matter of law is dependent upon factual context–the defendant is afforded justice as well. In this case, both courts decided that the facts before them were not sufficient to demonstrate duress or defeat the defendant’s equitable defense of laches.

Both courts also overlooked the purposes of the HEAR Act to remove technical defenses from deciding restitution claims on their merits and facts. Finally, the courts did not take into consideration the fact that twenty years earlier, plaintiff, heir of Carlota Landsberg (daughter of Karl Adler) had already tried unsuccessfully to recover another painting that belonged to his family before the War and which was sent to J. Thannhasuer for safekeeping during the war and which was looted from Paris. When the Bennigson v. Alsdorf decision came down, the HEAR Act was perhaps only a thought in the minds of legislators. The actual question raised by Bennigson v. Guggenheim twenty years later is whether the HEAR Act was ever able to help remedy historical wrongs associated with Nazi-era crimes against persons and property.

Courts are not all to blame for the difficulty presented to claimants seeking to retrieve their property–there is a serious issue in the world of art dealing, where provenance is not diligently recorded or catalogued, and the transfer of pieces from dealer to dealer or client to client is inscrutable. As a result, good-faith purchasers are haled into court decades later, and heirs and descendants of those who had their property stolen, believing it destroyed and irretrievable, are left with no remedy.

As of January 15, 2026, the decision is appealed to the New York Court of Appeals.^[59]

About the Authors:

Lauren Stein is a law student at Wake Forest University School of Law and an intern with the Center for Art Law for the 2025-2026 academic year. She is currently pursuing a career in art law in New York.

Donyea James is a third-year law student at Fordham School of Law and an intern with the Center for Art Law for the Spring 2026 semester. She is interested in issues concerning restitution, museum provenance, and artists’ rights.

Suggested Readings

• Zuckerman v. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 928 F.3d 186 (2d Cir. 2019).
• Weitong Shan, Case Review: Bennigson v. Solomon R. Guggenheim Found., Harv. Int’l L.J. (Feb. 21, 2025), https://journals.law.harvard.edu/ilj/2025/02/case-review-bennigson-v-the-solomon-r-guggenheim-found/

Select References

1. Bennigson v. Solomon R. Guggenheim Found., 214 N.Y.S.3d 628, 640 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2024). ↑
2. Id. ↑
3. Congresswoman Laurel Lee Introduces Bill to Help Holocaust Survivors and Families Reclaim Stolen Art, CONGRESSWOMAN LAUREL LEE (June 27, 2025), https://laurellee.house.gov/media/press-releases/congresswoman-laurel-lee-introduces-bill-help-holocaust-survivors-and-families#:~:text=The%20original%20HEAR%20Act%20was,their%20stolen%20art%20is%20located. ↑
4. Unpacking Nazi-Era Art Restitution Cases Under HEAR Act, PATTERSON BELKNAP (Oct. 2, 2024), https://www.pbwt.com/publications/unpacking-nazi-era-art-restitution-cases-under-hear-act. ↑
5. Bennigson, 214 N.Y.S.3d at 632. ↑
6. Id. at 633. ↑
7. Id. ↑
8. Id. at 635. ↑
9. Id. ↑
10. Id. at 634. ↑
11. Id. at 636. ↑
12. Id. at 638. ↑
13. Id. ↑
14. Id. at 637. ↑
15. Id. at 638. ↑
16. Id. ↑
17. Id. ↑
18. Id. ↑
19. Id. at 638-39. ↑
20. Id. at 639. ↑
21. Id. ↑
22. Id. at 639-40. ↑
23. Id. at 640. ↑
24. Id. at 640. ↑
25. Id. at 641. ↑
26. Id. at 637. ↑
27. Id. at 642. ↑
28. Id. at 631. ↑
29. Id. at 631-32. ↑
30. Laches, CORNELL LAW (last accessed Jan. 26, 2025), https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/laches. ↑
31. Bennigson, 214 N.Y.S.3d at 642 (internal citations omitted). ↑
32. Id. at 642 (internal citations omitted). ↑
33. Id. at 641-42. ↑
34. Id. at 639. ↑
35. Id. ↑
36. Id. at 644-45. ↑
37. Id. at 645. ↑
38. Id. ↑
39. Id. at 646. ↑
40. Id. at 632, citing Sherman v. Sherman, 20 NYS 414 (Ct. Common Pleas, NY County 1892). ↑
41. Id. at 646. ↑
42. Id. ↑
43. Id. at 647, citing Aylaian v. Town of Huntington, 762 F. Supp. 2d 537 (2011). ↑
44. Id. at 647. ↑
45. Id. ↑
46. 2024 WL 6883881 (N.Y.A.D. 1 Dept) No. 2024-04235 December 30, 2024 Brief for Plaintiffs-Appellants at 8. ↑
47. See Reply Brief 2025 WL 295791 (N.Y.A.D. 1 Dept) March 20, 2025 at 3. ↑
48. Id. at 4–5. ↑
49. Id. at 6. ↑
50. Id. at 7–8 ↑
51. Brief for the Appellant, at 34. ↑
52. Bennigson v. Solomon R. Guggenheim Found., 242 A.D.3d 567, 568. ↑
53. Id. ↑
54. Id. (citing 928 F.3d 186, 190, 192, 197 (2d Cir. 2019), cert denied 140 S.Ct 1269 (2020)). ↑
55. Id. at 569. ↑
56. Id. ↑
57. Id. ↑
58. Id. ↑
59. Motion No. 2025-06304, Index No. 650416/23, Case No. 2024-04235. ↑