A findings paragraph says defenses based on the passage of time must be precluded
What the document says“In order to effectuate the purpose of the Act to permit claims to recover Nazi-looted art to be resolved on the merits, these defenses must be precluded.”
A new paragraph (8) inserted into section 2 of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (22 U.S.C. 1621 note), after the existing paragraph (7). The paragraph states that the intent of that Act is to permit claims to recover Nazi-looted art to be brought notwithstanding the passage of time since World War II, states that some courts have frustrated that intent by dismissing recovery lawsuits, and names the defenses it means: laches, adverse possession, acquisitive prescription, usucapion, the act of state doctrine, forum non conveniens, international comity, and prudential exhaustion. It cites three decisions as examples, Zuckerman v Metropolitan Museum of Art, 928 F.3d 186 (2d Cir. 2019), Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, 89 F.4th 1226 (9th Cir. 2024), and Von Saher v Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, 897 F.3d 1141 (9th Cir. 2018). This law does not state what any of those decisions held.
What the document actually says“In order to effectuate the purpose of the Act to permit claims to recover Nazi-looted art to be resolved on the merits, these defenses must be precluded.”
The old law was meant to let these cases be heard. So these court reasons for saying no must be shut off.
Congress says here what it meant in 2016. It says some judges got it wrong. They threw out cases because many years had passed. Congress says that must stop.
No action is recorded against this proposal. That is not evidence that none has been taken, and nobody has yet read it against the record. See what the tracker does not yet cover.