The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act bars a lawsuit in New York against the Free State of Bavaria for the recovery of a Pablo Picasso painting that was allegedly part of a forced transfer by the Nazi regime in the 1930s, a federal judge has ruled.
Southern District Judge Jed Rakoff (See Profile) said the sale of Picasso’s “Madame Soler” took place in Europe, not the United States, so none of the “commercial activity” exceptions to sovereign immunity under the act apply in Schoeps v. Free State of Bavaria, 13 Civ. 2048.
