Hughes Estate Group publishes Estate Street – about all things estate and tax planning. This post reports on the dispute over a $90 million dollar collection of art from Papua New Guinea:
"Three brothers have been feuding since 2005 over the estate of their mother, Evelyn A.J. Hall who was a sister of the late publishing tycoon Walter Annenberg. John Friede and his brothers reached a settlement where John agreed to pay his brothers $30 million dollars, $20 million which was secured by the collection. The problem was he had signed the collection over to the museum the week before. Oops!"
More info from the San Francisco Chronicle here and here.
From the New York Times on October 5, 2008:
"Last month a Florida judge ruled that Mr. Friede’s brothers, Robert Friede, 68, and Thomas Jaffe, 58, could take possession of the entire collection. The judge determined that John Friede had violated the terms of an October 2007 settlement in the estate dispute in which he put up his collection as collateral. Later the city attorney’s office in San Francisco, acting on the de Young Museum’s behalf, sued and obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting the brothers and John and Marcia Friede from disturbing the collection until a judge could determine who legally had title to it.
And on Thursday a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that Sotheby’s, which lent Mr. Friede $25 million and has not been repaid, could take possession of 54 artworks that are part of the collateral for the loan. The judge placed a restraining order on another 99 works to which priority rights are being disputed between Sotheby’s and Mr. Friede’s brothers. "