The Norton Simon Museum filed a federal countersuit Oct. 14 to block a state court challenge to its ownership of two Nazi-looted Renaissance paintings.

The Pasadena museum wants a judge to stop the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles from pursuing a lawsuit filed Sept. 14 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. At stake is the "Adam and Eve" diptych, a pair of life-size oil panels painted around 1530 by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The museum bought the paintings in 1971 for $800,000. They were appraised at $24 million when the prior lawsuit was filed in 2007, according to the Pasadena Star News.

"The finality of the prior von Saher judgment is beyond dispute," the museum states in its federal complaint, as first reported by Courthouse News Service. "After 12 years of litigation … this court found on the merits that the museum was the sole owner of the Cranachs."

The museum argues the Anti-Injunction Act allows a federal court to halt state proceedings when doing so protects a prior federal judgment. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati represents the museum.

A twice-looted masterpiece

The diptych has changed hands multiple times.

Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker purchased the panels in 1931 from the Soviet Union, which had seized them from the Russian Stroganoff family. Goudstikker fled the Netherlands in May 1940 after the German invasion. He died during the crossing to Great Britain, leaving behind more than 1,200 paintings.

Nazi leader Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler's second-in-command, seized much of the collection, including the Cranach panels. After the war, the United States recovered the works and turned them over to the Dutch government.

Goudstikker's widow reached a settlement with the Dutch government in 1952, but it did not include the works Göring had taken. The Dutch government sold the Cranach paintings in 1966 to George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, a descendant of the Russian family who claimed ownership, according to the museum's complaint. The Norton Simon then purchased them from Stroganoff for $800,000 in 1971.

Marei von Saher, Goudstikker's sole surviving heir, learned the paintings were at the Norton Simon in 2000 when an art historian spotted them during a visit, the Pasadena Star News reported. She tried for six years to reclaim them informally before suing in federal court in 2007.

U.S. District Judge John Walter dismissed the case in 2016, ruling the Goudstikker estate lost its rights by missing a 1951 Dutch government deadline to request the art's return. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in 2018, finding it could not declare illegal a sale made by a foreign government. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.

New laws reopen the door

Von Saher assigned her claim to the Jewish Federation, which filed its state lawsuit the same day, Sept. 14. The suit relies on AB 2867, a California law signed in September 2024 that gives claimants a two-year window to refile cases involving art lost through political persecution. The law requires courts to apply California property rules, under which a thief cannot pass valid title to a buyer.

Both cases also cite the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act (HEAR Act), a federal law first passed in 2016. The Pasadena Star News reported the HEAR Act was expanded in April, while Courthouse News references it as the 2025 HEAR Act. The law limits certain procedural defenses museums have used to block restitution claims.

Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles, said in a statement that the effort seeks "to reverse a great injustice perpetrated by the Nazi theft of a Jewish family's property."

Courthouse News reported that Jewish Federation representatives did not respond to a request for comment on the countersuit. The Norton Simon seeks both a preliminary and permanent injunction to force the Federation to drop its state case. The Jewish Federation is represented by Arnold & Porter.

The nonprofit Art Ashes, which pushed for the HEAR Act, stated the lawsuits could affect more than 100,000 cases of looted art, according to the Pasadena Star News.