Collecting What You Aren’t Supposed To Have — Redux!

Almost a year ago, I wrote an article about what happens when the collectibles and antiques you own turn out to be owned illegally. It’s largely an unintentional act, but people have found their fine art was stolen from its rightful owner and made it through several layers of dealers before it was tracked down. Nations argue over whether an artifact should rightfully belong to the country, or whether it should be in private hands. There’s lots of cases where an object turns out to be illegally owned, through no fault of the current owner.

The article turned out to be prophetic; last fall, the wifey and I received an official communication from a law office.

They claimed we had no right to own an item we had purchased in Wisconsin a few years ago, and had for sale on our website.

The story starts in the 1940s. 20th Century Fox lent several large, hand-bound books to the University of Southern California library. These books were educational “sample” books, showing examples of the various documents and forms used during production of films and in normal studio operations. We presume they were most useful to the film school or theatre courses.

Someone, it seems, thought it was of more value to themselves. The book was taken from the library, and disappeared.

Fast forward to 2005 in Wisconsin. The wifey were browsing an antique dealer’s wares, doing as a lot of resellers do: making a big pile and trying to make a deal with the proprietor for the whole lot. Not knowing the book’s origins and history, it caught my eye immediately as something very unusual and valuable. We paid more for this book than we probably should have, but its obvious obscurity and rarity looked well worth the money. We bought the book and numerous other things for several hundred dollars. We didn’t put it up for sale right away; I went through each page and took a close look at everything enclosed — the contents were amazing; copies of studio call lists, production reports for movies, a photo and map of the studio…all kinds of stuff, rare stuff, things that are probably not seen outside of the Studio’s own archives. We tried selling it on eBay, but it didn’t hit the reserve. Figuring we had to wait for the right buyer who both understands the value of the book plus has deep enough pockets to afford it, we listed it in our online store for what I figured it was worth, and waited.

It never caught the eye of a buyer, but 20th Century Fox Film Studio’s legal department found it first. In these days of the internet, between eBay and personal websites there’s a lot for a movie studio to be concerned about. People using copyright-protected materials on their websites, for free, must be stopped. Props stolen from movie sets need to be recovered. Disclosure of information covered by non-disclosure agreements must be hidden. A Fox lawyer, using Google, found the book’s listing in our store. He immediately contacted us.

The lawyer told us the story of the book, asked us how it came into our possession (he was most intrigued how it made it so far across the country), and informed us that it was stolen property and we had no right to own it.

Before the Fox representative said anything more, I knew we had several options:

1. Turn the book over to the studio, with our apologies, and be done with it;
2. Decline to accept the studio’s explanation, and ignore their request for return of the book;
3. Sue the studio for the book, claiming it abandoned/not the book the say it is/was bought through proper channels;
4. Have the book forcefully removed from our possession on court order.

Any combination of the above could have happened, in any order…if either us or the studio wished to be difficult about it. Fox could have chosen not to contact us at all, instead filing for a judgement, thus requiring us to present our case to a judge. Upon filing the judgement, they could have had the Sheriff seize the property during the proceedings. Both sides would have to do their work to meet the burden of proof to validate their claim of ownership. We risked criminal charges if found in court to be breaking laws covering possession of stolen items.

Fox, recognizing the situation, understood that such action would probably be overkill, and they risked them losing their rights to the book if a judge felt their case wasn’t solid enough. Putting us through the legal expense and wranglings would create ill will with us, when simply asking would be the best first option.

The wifey and I briefly discussed challenging Fox’s claim, due to the fact that they didn’t provide any hard evidence that this was a stolen book, let alone the stolen book they claim it is. If Fox were to take their case to court, they’d have to provide firm evidence to prove their case to convince a judge to return the book to their possession. I’m sure Fox has proof somewhere, but we had to weigh the value of fighting the legal claim versus working out a deal.

This point here is the tipping point whenever it is found that a collector has illegal property in their possession. Even if a court motion is the first knowledge of the disputed ownership, working out a deal with the rightful owner is the first step. Unless a collector knows indisputably that the other party has no rightful claim, a reasonable agreement should be met in the middle. In nearly every case listed in my previous article, the current owner attempted, or was in the process of, working with either law enforcement or the party claiming ownership. Stephen Spielberg has discovered a stolen painting in his collection, and he went to the FBI for help in working out ownership; I highly doubt legal action will be taken against Spielberg, but he is definitely at risk of losing the painting…but not all stolen items end up returned to the original owner. Acting in good faith is likely to encourage a amicable resolution, and if the problem has no other recourse but to go to court, the judge may view the attempts to resolve the situation in a positive light.

Neither side has a guaranteed win in cases like this, so Fox’s first step was to offer a resolution of the problem: they would pay us what it cost us to acquire the book, plus shipping and handling, and we would send it to them, no strings attached. There was one problem, from our point of view: we didn’t purchase this item individually, and, because we bought it ‘under the table’ as a entire lot, for cash, we didn’t even have a receipt for it. I explained the situation to the Fox lawyer, outlining a reasonable estimate of our expense in obtaining the book, along with what I expected it would cost to return it to Fox.

The Fox lawyer made no arguments, and accepted my price. He had two requests: An official invoice for purchase of the item, and our business’ tax ID information for the account department’s records.

Each side had to make concessions in the situation. We ended up losing our expected profit on the book, and Fox essentially transacted the deal as though we were rightful owner, purchasing it from us as any customer. If we accepted Discover cards, it would have been a faster transaction, but because the lawyer had to requisition a cheque it took more time to proceed. The cheque arrived last Friday, and I will send the book out on Monday. Fox will have their book back, the wifey and I have been reasonably reimbursed for our part in the deal, and no court time occurred.

The moral of the story is that, while owning a stolen antique or collectible is a serious problem, acting responsibly and negotiating with the other party can reduce potential problems and hopefully avoid any legal action. When I wrote the article originally, I had no idea we owned anything that would be considered stolen. It was eye-opening to find out that even the wifey and I, who watch out for potential problems like these, still ended up in the position of possessing an item that we weren’t supposed to have.