Caveat Emptor: Pre Purchase Due Diligence Duties of U.S. Art Merchants for Transactions outside the Temporal Scope of the 1970 UNESCO Convention
Article from: TDM 5 (2013), in Art and Heritage Disputes in International and Comparative Law
Introduction
Proof of performance of due diligence is significant in art-related disputes before U.S. courts for two main reasons: it is one of the elements which substantiate a buyer's good faith in controversies related to the a non domino purchase of cultural properties and it can prevent the statute of limitation to sue in replevin from running. In the former case, due diligence is equivalent to undertaking an inquiry into the ownership history of an object, whereas in the latter it is connected with the amount of effort employed by a dispossessed owner to locate and recover his or her ...