Judge: Cases Against Ann Freedman Can Go Forward

The judge in the Ann Freedman case has released his ruling on the request for summary judgment in the case. You can read it yourself (above) or read Graham Bowley’s summary from the New York Times (below):

the judge in two of the cases, Paul G. Gardephe of United States District Court in Manhattan, has ruled that the suits should go to trial.

“Plaintiffs have offered ample circumstantial evidence demonstrating that Freedman acted with fraudulent intent and understood that the Rosales Paintings were not authentic,” he wrote in his strongly worded ruling. […]

In explaining his decision, the judge gave an inventory of evidence that he said suggested Ms. Freedman could have recognized something was wrong, including changes in Ms. Rosales’s account of how she had come into possession of the paintings, all said to have been owned by a collector, “Mr. X,” whose identity the gallery never learned.

In addition, the judge said that the family of the artist Richard Diebenkorn had — as early as the mid-1990s — raised questions about the authenticity of some paintings that Ms. Rosales provided and said were Diebenkorns.

But the sales of Rosales fakes, which had started in 1994, continued until 2008, court papers say, even after a report by the International Foundation for Art Research in 2003 questioned the authenticity of a work said to be a Pollock, and the gallery then refunded the money to the buyer.

In her defense, Ms. Freedman has discussed her efforts to verify the account Ms. Rosales provided about the collector, including having the gallery staff research it. She also said she had widely exhibited the paintings in places where their attribution could have been challenged, and that she had bought several herself.

But Judge Gardephe said that the exhibiting had created “a facade of credibility” and that, whatever her motive, Ms. Freedman had used the fact that she had purchased Rosales works as a “promotional device.”

In his decision, the judge dismissed complaints against Michael Hammer, Knoedler’s owner, and Jaime Andrade, a former gallery employee, whom the ruling identified as the person who had introduced Ms. Rosales to Ms. Freedman.

Lawsuits in Knoedler Forgery Case Are Set for Trial  (NYTimes.com)