# Good Faith Purchase and the Geography of Title > The same painting can be recoverable in New York and unrecoverable in Madrid. Cassirer shows why: three years of good faith possession under Spanish law defeated a 1939 forced sale. > The Study - 2026-08-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/good-faith-purchase-and-the-geography-of-title/ ## Key points - Under German law there is no good faith acquisition of stolen goods (BGB section 935(1)), but a good faith possessor acquires title after ten years, a sale at public auction transfers title, and the owner's claim is time-barred thirty years after the loss. - In Cassirer the Ninth Circuit applied Spanish Civil Code article 1955, under which three years of good faith possession vests ownership, and gave judgment for the Madrid foundation over a documented 1939 forced sale. - New York's demand and refusal rule imposes no duty of reasonable diligence on the dispossessed owner, so the clock against a good faith purchaser does not start until demand is made and refused. - The 1970 UNESCO Convention requires the requesting state to pay just compensation to an innocent purchaser, and UNIDROIT 1995 pays a diligent good faith possessor on restitution; neither instrument is retroactive. ## Two systems, and the whole difference between them ## Spain, and the three years that ended a twenty-year case ## The American clock: demand, refusal, and then a statute that stopped it ## The treaties do less than their reputation suggests ## What a buyer is actually pricing Title in art is not a property of the object. It is a property of the object's itinerary, and it is rewritten every time the work crosses a border into a system with a different rule about good faith, prescription and time. A picture with thirty quiet years in Madrid, a public auction in Germany or a private sale in a jurisdiction that protects the buyer has been legally transformed by a history that leaves no trace on the canvas. That is why serious diligence records where a work physically sat, and in whose hands, at every moment when title might have moved, and treats a clean recent provenance in the wrong country as the most expensive kind of comfort. ## Questions **Why can the same object be recoverable in one country and not another?** Because the substantive law of title differs and the forum's choice-of-law rules select which law applies. In Cassirer the Ninth Circuit applied Spanish law, under which three years of good faith possession vests ownership, and the claim failed; the same court recorded that Californian law, where a thief passes no title, would have produced the opposite result. **Does a public auction really cleanse a stolen work in Germany?** Section 935(2) of the German Civil Code transfers title to a good faith acquirer where the work is sold at public auction, notwithstanding the general rule in section 935(1) that stolen goods cannot be acquired in good faith. This is drawn from a practitioner guide to German art law and should be checked against the current text of the code and its case law before it is relied on in a transaction. **Did the 2016 HEAR Act solve the limitation problem in the United States?** Partly. It gave claimants six years from actual discovery for losses between 1 January 1933 and 31 December 1945 and displaced other limitation periods, but it left equitable and jurisdictional defences intact and was due to expire on 1 January 2027. The 2025 Act, signed on 13 April 2026, removes the sunset and, on practitioner readings of the enacted text, precludes laches, act of state, comity and forum non conveniens. It has not yet been construed on appeal. **Is UNIDROIT 1995 useful for a Nazi-era claim?** Rarely. It is not retroactive and expressly does not legitimise or reopen transactions concluded before its entry into force, and its restitution regime runs between contracting states. Its lasting influence is conceptual: article 4 rewards a possessor who can prove due diligence with fair and reasonable compensation, which is the clearest statement anywhere of what diligence is actually worth. ## Sources - [1] Commission for Looted Art in Europe, 'Laws, Policies and Guidelines: Art Law in Germany' (March 2019 practitioner guide: BGB sections 932, 935(1), 935(2), ten-year prescription, section 197(1) no. 1 thirty-year limitation). - [2] Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 9 January 2024, FindLaw (facts, choice of law, Spanish Civil Code article 1955, judgment for the foundation, Callahan J concurring). - [3] Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation v. Lubell, 77 N.Y.2d 311 (1991), Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School (demand and refusal; no duty of reasonable diligence; laches preserved). - [4] Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, Public Law 114-308, Congress.gov (covered period; six years from actual discovery; preemption; sunset). - [5] The White House, 'Congressional Bills S. 1884 and S. 3971 Signed into Law', 13 April 2026. - [6] Snell and Wilmer, 'The Revised HEAR Act: Expanded Opportunities for Owners and Heirs to Recover Nazi-Looted Art' (barred defences; treatment of acquisitive prescription; application to pending cases; removal of the sunset). - [7] The Art Newspaper, 'US Congress passes revamped Holocaust recovery bill that sidesteps many legal defences', 17 March 2026 (legislative timeline; opposition of the Association of Art Museum Directors). - [8] UNESCO, Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, 14 November 1970 (article 7(b); just compensation to an innocent purchaser; article 13(d); non-retroactivity). - [9] UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, Rome, 24 June 1995 (articles 3 and 4; three-year and fifty-year periods; seventy-five year declaration; compensation for a diligent good faith possessor; non-retroactivity). - [10] Koch Boes Rechtsanwaelte, 'Germany's New Arbitration Court for Nazi-Looted Cultural Property: Key Procedural Features' (assessment framework, reduced burden of proof, presumptions).