Overview
Judge Cedarbaum granted summary judgment on Thursday to a pro se defendant who sold a forged Milton Avery painting to ACA Galleries, Inc. She concluded ACA could not claim “mutual mistake” because it failed to investigate the work’s authenticity before the purchase. For the same reasons, she concluded that it could not prove reasonable reliance necessary for a fraud claim: “ACA cannot establish justifiable reliance because it had the opportunity to fully investigate the authenticity of the painting but failed to do so . . . . ACA is in the business of buying and selling art. Such a business must be cognizant of forgery of the works of well-known artists like Avery.”
