Update: Minor vs Christies

Kelly Crow, writing for the Wall Street Journal reports that Halsey Minor has won in a suit against Christie's auction house. Minor sued Christie's after the auction house failed to return property in a timely manor. Minor claimed that because of the delay, the market went into decline and the value of the art was reduced. Christe's held the art from May until Nov 2008, as the contemporary art market fell considerably. Christie's claimed to hold the property as collateral against monies Minor owed the auction house. The court ordered Christie's to pay Minor $8.57 million which was deemed the amount of loss of value.

Determining the difference in value was probably a very good assignment for an appraiser. I certainly hope the court and both sides used expert fine art appraisers in determining the loss of value over those several months.

Minor still owed Christie's approximately $7 million, so the judge ordered Minor to pay the difference of about $1.4 million to clear his debt. Minor still has litigation pending with Sotheby's whom owes around $6 million and as reported here on the Appraiser Workshops Blog he just sold $21 million in art to cover other debt with Bank of America.

Crow reports

Mr. Minor owed the auction house roughly $12 million for other works he bought from the house around that same time, including a painting by Mary Cassatt, according to court documents. He continued to bid at Christie's sales throughout that spring and summer of 2008, winning other works such as a Thomas Moran landscape, five equestrian scenes and an Andy Warhol print of Grace Kelly.

By mid-August, Mr. Minor had paid $5 million toward his purchases and asked Christie's to return his Prince pieces, which hadn't attracted any buyers. The auction house told Mr. Minor the Princes would be returned to him shortly, yet Christie's staff had actually decided not to ship them back until Mr. Minor paid his remaining debts in full, according to staff emails submitted to the court as evidence.

Mr. Minor complained and Christie's returned the works in November, but the house's decision to tell the collector one thing but do another led the jury to find Christie's guilty of fraud, according to the court verdict. The jury also found the house guilty of breach of contract and conversion, a legal term for wrongfully keeping another's property.

Mr. Minor, who reneged on paying for the remaining $7 million of his winning bids, was ordered by the judge to pay Christie's $1.4 million – the difference in the commission the auction house would have collected from him compared with the lower commission it got from eventually reselling the Cassatt and other works at a discount.

To read the full WSJ article, click HERE.