In Schoeps v Sompo Holdings, Inc., No. 25-1405 (7th Cir. Nov. 21, 2025), the Seventh Circuit holds that the happenstance of an artwork, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888), having once been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago did not create personal jurisdiction to sue over the painting’s ownership in Illinois.
The heirs (Schoeps) of “Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German art collector who was persecuted by the Nazi government, brought this action against Sompo Holdings, Inc. (‘Sompo Holdings’), Sompo International Holdings Ltd. (‘Sompo International’), Sompo Japan Insurance, Inc. (‘Sompo Japan’), and Sompo Fine Art Foundation (‘Sompo Foundation’). They seek to recover Sunflowers, a painting by Vincent van Gogh. According to the allegations of the complaint, the defendants wrongfully converted the painting and exploited it for financial gain.” This is the painting that was famously auctioned off by Christie’s in 1987 for $39.9 million to a Japanese insurance company (Yasuda), which then smashed the record for the sale of a single work of art.
Schoeps complained that Sunflowers was subject to a “forced sale” at a below-market price because of Nazi persecution in 1934. After Yasuda acquired the painting, the company maintained it in Japan, though in 2001 it “loaned the painting to the Art Institute of Chicago for temporary exhibition. That exhibition—titled ‘Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South’—lasted approximately four months, from September 2001 to January 2002.” After a further exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, “Sunflowers returned to Japan in 2002, where it has remained.”
In 2022, Schoeps “brought this action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. They sought the recovery of Sunflowers (or alternatively, the current fair value of the painting), damages, and injunctive relief.” The lawsuit alleged state-law theories of replevin, constructive trust, unjust enrichment, and various torts. It also claimed unjust enrichment and restitution under federal common law. “With respect to the timeliness of their claims, the plaintiffs relied entirely on the federal Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, Pub. L. No. 114-308, 130 Stat. 1524 (2016) (‘HEAR Act’). The HEAR Act preempts state and federal statutes of limitations for civil claims to recover artwork lost between 1933 and 1945 because of Nazi persecution.”
The district court dismissed different parts of the case on subject-matter and personal jurisdiction grounds.
The Seventh Circuit affirms, albeit on alternative grounds.
Like the district court, it rejects the federal-law remedies on the ground that the HEAR Act did not create a cause of action that would permit the exercise of federal common-law authority. “[T]he text of the statute is clear: ‘Nothing in this Act shall be construed to create a civil claim or cause of action under Federal or State law.’ HEAR Act § 5(f). It clearly would be inconsistent with the text and design of the statute to find an implied federal cause of action.” It also holds, as did the district court, that there was no conflict between the application of state law and USA foreign policy sufficient to warrant a federal-law interest in the dispute.
The panel parts with the district court, though, in its holding that the HEAR Act furnishes federal-question jurisdiction for the state law claims. The district court, relying on Holtzman as Trustee of Elizabeth McManus Holtzman Irrevocable Trust v. Philadelphia Museum of Art, No. 22-cv-0122, 2022 WL 2651851, at *7 (E.D. Pa. July 7, 2022), “held summarily that it had federal question jurisdiction over these state law claims” by virtue of the HEAR Act. The Seventh Circuit does not instantly accept this conclusion but, because the parties did not challenge it on appeal, disregards it in favor of dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction.
Because all the litigants in the case are aliens, the only Illinois nexus to the dispute was (1) the presence of a corporate subsidiary of a defendant, and (2) the 2001 Art Institute show.
The former fails as a ground for jurisdiction because the subsidiary did not play a role in the underlying dispute. “The existence of an office and the sale of insurance would give Sompo International clear notice, for example, of lawsuits relating to its office lease, its various employment agreements for Illinois-based employees, and the sale of their insurance products. However, these activities do not give clear notice to Sompo International that it may be sued over the ownership of a painting that its parent company purchased in Europe and regularly displays in Japan.”
Regarding the latter, “[t]he exhibition in Chicago is only relevant to the extent that it facilitated Sompo Japan’s sale of insurance in Illinois. But Sompo Japan sells no insurance in Illinois. Accordingly, the exhibition in Illinois does not create personal jurisdiction over Sompo Japan.” The panel notes two other decisions reaching a comparable result: Barzilai v. Museum, No. 153086/2022, 2022 WL 16856131, at *1–2 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Nov. 10, 2022), and Graff v. Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, Inc., 342 F. Supp. 3d 819, 826 (N.D. Ill. 2018), vacated on other grounds, No. 17 C 6748, 2019 WL 13196397 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 12, 2019). [Ed. – One wonders, though, whether the result might change if the action were one in rem while the painting was still in Chicago.]
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