A deal has been reached over control of an 1888 painting by Vincent van Gogh, lawyers said, weeks after the custody fight created public buzz and much tension near the end of a rare U.S. exhibition in Detroit.
Brokerarte Capital Partners LLC, which claims to own “The Novel Reader,” told a federal appeals court that it reached a confidential settlement with the unnamed entity who loaned the painting to the Detroit Institute of Arts for an exhibition of Van Gogh’s works that ended Jan. 22.
Because of the dispute, the museum has been under orders to hold the painting while the court determined who would next get the art.
Brokerarte Capital, an art brokerage, said it acquired the painting in 2017 for $3.7 million and gave temporary possession of it to a third party who absconded with it. The company filed a lawsuit on Jan. 10 seeking to seize the painting, and the museum subsequently posted a security guard next to it.
The museum was caught in the middle but wasn’t accused of wrongdoing. It has not publicly explained how it got the painting on loan, saying only that it came from a collection in Brazil.
Lawyers for Brokerarte Capital and its sole proprietor, Gustavo Soter of Brazil, said a deal had been reached with the other party.
“Consistent with the confidential settlement, Brokerarte no longer seeks injunctive relief, and therefore, this appeal is moot,” lawyers said in a March 13 filing with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The museum said it spent more than $100,000 defending itself in the litigation, which began in federal court in Detroit. It argued that a federal law governing the international sharing of art prevents courts from intervening. The U.S. Justice Department took a similar position.
The museum still is concerned about the significance of the appeals court issuing an injunction in February. It wants the court to consider declaring the injunction “null and void” so it can’t be cited as a precedent in any future international art disputes.
FIFA has appealed to Swiss federal judges after the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned a life ban for the former Haiti soccer federation president who was accused of multiple sexual offenses against players in women’s and girls’ national teams.
FIFA said Monday it filed a case at Switzerland’s supreme court to challenge the CAS ruling announced last month that upheld an appeal by 75-year-old Yves Jean-Bart.
“FIFA is concerned that this (CAS) award contains a number of very serious procedural and substantive flaws, including the CAS Panel’s failure to evaluate key pieces of evidence that were offered by FIFA,” soccer’s world body said in a statement.
FIFA said it asked the Swiss Federal Tribunal to annul the sports court verdict and refer the case back for a second hearing.
The federal court can review CAS decisions on limited grounds such as abuse of legal process. It rarely overturns verdicts.
FIFA’s ethics committee banned Jean-Bart from soccer in November 2020 and fined him 1 million Swiss francs ($1.08 million).
The published verdict detailed how FIFA ethics judges believed allegations that during 20 years as Haiti federation president Jean-Bart raped underage girls and habitually had sexual relationships with players.
When Jean-Bart’s appeal came to CAS one year ago, his legal team provided 21 witnesses who gave evidence on his behalf. FIFA produced one witness “as a victim of Yves Jean-Bart’s actions,” the sports court said about its verdict.
A Florida man has been sentenced to four years and seven months in federal prison for three felony charges related to the insurrection and storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mitchell Todd Gardner II, 34, of Seffner, Florida, was sentenced Thursday in federal court in the District of Columbia, according to court records. He pleaded guilty last year to civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon.
Gardner was arrested in Tampa in June 2021.
According to court documents, Gardner joined with others in objecting to Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over then-President Donald Trump. A mob attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying election results for Biden over the Trump, a Republican, authorities have said. Five people died in the violence.
According to the criminal complaint, Gardner was part of a mob just outside the lower west terrace tunnel of Congress and used a pepper spray device against officers within the tunnel area. The contents hit one officer directly in the face shield and splattered onto two other officers, officials said.
Gardner also urged other rioters to use a ladder to break into a window, prosecutors said. When the ladder was not used, Gardner stood on a window ledge outside of a Senate terrace room and damaged the window with the pepper spray device.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon has signed into law the nation’s first explicit ban on abortion pills since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
Gordon, a Republican, signed the bill Friday night while allowing a separate measure restricting abortion to become law without his signature.
The pills are already banned in 13 states that have blanket bans on all forms of abortion, and 15 states already have limited access to abortion pills. Until now, however, no state had passed a law specifically prohibiting such pills, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
A group seeking to open an abortion and women’s health clinic in Casper said it was evaluating legal options.
“We are dismayed and outraged that these laws would eradicate access to basic health care, including safe, effective medication abortion,” Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement Saturday.
The clinic, which a firebombing prevented from opening last year, is one of two nonprofits suing to block an earlier Wyoming abortion ban. No arrests in the arson have been made, and organizers say the clinic is now tentatively scheduled to open in April, depending on abortion’s legal status in Wyoming then.
Currently Wyoming has only one abortion provider, a physician in Jackson who performs only medication abortions.
The Republican governor’s decision on the two measures comes after the issue of access to abortion pills took center stage this week in a Texas court. A federal judge there raised questions about a Christian group’s effort to overturn the decades-old U.S. approval of a leading abortion drug, mifepristone.
Medication abortions became the preferred method for ending pregnancy in the U.S. even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling that protected the right to abortion for nearly five decades. A two-pill combination of mifepristone and another drug is the most common form of abortion in the U.S.
An Alabama woman has been charged in the killing of her 8-year-old son, who was found with a knife protruding from his chest, investigators said.
Jennifer Nicole Long, 41, of Hartselle, is charged with capital murder in the death of her son, the Morgan County sheriff’s office said in a statement. Investigators said they discovered the grisly scene Thursday morning when they responded to a 911 call about a reported stabbing, the sheriff’s office said.
A man with multiple stab wounds told arriving deputies that he had been stabbed by his daughter and was concerned for the safety of his 8-year-old grandson, an investigator said in a court document. When deputies got to the home, they encountered Long coming down the stairs and found the boy in a bedroom, according to the court filing.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion for women’s rights whose death ahead of the 2020 election allowed the Supreme Court to become more conservative, will be remembered during ceremonies Friday at the high court.
Ginsburg, who served as a justice for 27 years and was the Supreme Court’s second female member, will be remembered by some of the people who worked for her as law clerks, young lawyers who spend a year at the court working for a justice. The group includes Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s solicitor general, its top Supreme Court lawyer, as well as several judges and professors.
The ceremonies, technically a meeting of the Supreme Court Bar followed by a special session of the court, are a tradition at the high court following the death of a justice, a tradition dating back to 1822. The court will livestream the meeting on its website beginning at 1:45 p.m. EDT.
Ginsburg’s death just over six weeks before the 2020 election was immensely consequential. It allowed then-President Donald Trump to fill the liberal justice’s seat on the court with a conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and gave conservatives a 6-3 majority on the bench. Barrett was among the justices who voted last year to overturn Roe v. Wade and do away with constitutional protections for abortion, protections Ginsburg had backed as a justice.
As an advocate for women’s rights before becoming a judge, Ginsburg won five of the six cases she argued before the high court in the 1970s. She was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
Late in life as the court’s senior liberal she became something of an icon, particularly to young women, and earned the nickname the “Notorious RBG.” Among the things she was known for was her collection of judicial collars, lace and beaded adornments she would wear over her robe. She was also an avid proponent of exercise and regularly worked out with a personal trainer, who wrote a book about her workout routine that came out in 2017.
Over the years, Ginsburg had several public battles with cancer. She died at age 87 of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. After her death, she made history as the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.
Ginsburg is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, just over the Potomac River from Washington.
Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill Thursday aimed at creating new crimes to punish hazing, responding to calls for action following a university student’s death.
The Senate voted 30-4 for final passage, sending the measure to Gov. Andy Beshear.
“For far too long, hazing has been this awkward right of passage in Kentucky that many still refuse to acknowledge was wrong,” said Republican Sen. Robby Mills, the bill’s lead sponsor.
The bill’s passage came at the start of a full day of votes on stacks of legislation. It was the final day before lawmakers begin an extended break to give the governor time to consider signing or vetoing the bills sent to him. Lawmakers will reconvene at the end of March for the final two days of the session.
The anti-hazing bill would create a felony crime for hazing that results in the death or serious injury of a student. The offense would be punishable by up to five years in prison. Also under the bill, someone accused of recklessly engaging in hazing would face a misdemeanor charge, punishable by up to a year in jail.
"Our intent is to save lives,” Republican Rep. Jonathan Dixon said as the House debated the bill Wednesday.
The House passed the measure — Senate Bill 9 — on a 96-3 vote after making a few changes. The Senate accepted those changes Thursday during the final action that sent the bill to the governor.
Supporters of the bill include the family of Thomas “Lofton” Hazelwood, a University of Kentucky student who died in 2021 at age 18. Tracey Hazelwood, the student’s mother, told lawmakers that after he pledged to a fraternity, her son had to participate in illegal acts that “could have got him kicked out of school” in order to belong to the fraternity, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. On the night he died of alcohol toxicity, his blood alcohol concentration was 0.354, well over the legal limit for adults to drive.