O'KEEFFE v. Snyder

The Court today rules that if a work of art has been stolen from an artist, the artist’s right to recover his or her work from a subsequent possessor would be barred by the statute of limitations if the action were not brought within six years after the original theft. This can happen even though the artist may have been totally innocent and wholly ignorant of the identity of the thief or of any intervening receivers or possessors of the stolen art. The Court would grudgingly grant some measure of *508relief from this horrendous result and allow the artist to bring suit provided he or she can…