On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was tasked with determining whether Spanish or California law applied in deciding ownership of a Camille Pissarro painting stolen by Nazis in 1939 Germany.
The Supreme Court vacated the circuit court’s prior decision, remanding with the instructions to apply California’s choice-of-law rules instead of federal choice-of-law rules in order to determine what law governed the disputed claim of title to the Pissarro painting “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain.”