Don’t Go Takin’ My Art

Mathew Hoffman –Litigator, Rabbi, & Storyteller of the Art Underworld

Mathew Hoffman (spelled with one “t”) has been a litigator for over four decades. While he has won multimillion-dollar cases concerning breach of contract, discrimination claims, real estate, and even helped the NBA move the Jazz from New Orleans to Utah, Mat has also cultivated a specialty as a fine art litigator. As Mat himself will tell you, the fine art world is not quite as distinguished as its name might suggest and is often riddled with intrigue and unsavory characters. Mat has worked on several highprofile art cases that have been covered in the New York Times, Bloomberg, and various art trade journals. Additionally, Mat is an ordained rabbi who provides free marriage counseling services along with his wife who holds a PhD in psychology (you can check out the Hoffmans’ website at myjewishmarriage.com).

We sat down with Mat to discuss his many years navigating the dark recesses of the fine art underworld and how his rabbinical studies have, surprisingly, helped him along the way.

What’s it like working in the fine art industry?

There are industries that operate on handshakes, without written documentation. The diamond business is like that. So is the art industry. But you always hear that people in the diamond industry are honest whereas the general rule in the art industry is that a huge number of people are dishonest. So you have people operating without written agreements, and many times they’re operating dishonestly. It’s unreal to see.

I once had a client who went to an art gallery and dropped off a painting for sale. Now this is the art world, right? So the only thing he got was a receipt for this painting worth several hundred thousand dollars. My client called up the gallery a few months later to see if they’d been able to sell his painting, and the gallery basically said, “What painting?” We had to sue, and the gallery tried to say that the painting belonged to somebody else. We defeated that outrageous defense.

One of the judges in another case I worked on was quoted saying, “I have never seen an industry more ripe with fraud and misconduct than the art business. To say there’s such a thing as artistic ethics is an oxymoron. Most of the cases I’ve had involving art dealers involve fraud outright. Just plain old fraud. This is not a nice business.”

The bottom line is that you’re oftentimes dealing with people that are flat-out dishonest. They will sell the same piece of art several times to different people, with the theory that somehow it will all work out.

So it’s common for art dealers to try and sell works that don’t belong to them?

More common than you’d think. You have to understand that these fraudulent art dealers are so smooth that you have to keep reminding yourself that they’re criminals or you’ll buy a piece of art from them right then and there. They just sound so honest and credible.

A particular case I worked on involved an art dealer who sold tens of millions of dollars in paintings, but never alerted the paintings’ original owners about the sales. He just pocketed the cash for himself. And these were well-known paintings too, works by Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Vincent van Gogh, and the like.

Being in the art world is like being in the Wild West. You have no idea who’s going to be shootin’ at you next. You’ve always got to be looking over your shoulder.

So what happens when the original owners of the artwork realize they’ve been duped?

That’s when the art world gets particularly litigious. Here’s your basic problem: Imagine you went to a prestigious art dealer and gave him your art to sell. He sold it as if it were his and got the money, but he didn’t give the money to you . Now the buyer of the painting and you are fighting over who owns the artwork. Naturally, you’re going to say, “That’s my damn artwork! Give it back!” arguments that somebody may have used in the 15th century that your adversary is never going to think of. In Jewish law, there is also a willingness to argue for one’s position very insistently. If you do lose at the end of the day, then you accept your defeat gracefully. But until that moment, the idea that you’re willing to continue to argue has always resonated with me. My nickname used to be “Mad Dog” Hoffman. There actually used to be a sign in my office that said “Mad Dog” in Hebrew because I was known for biting down and never giving up. You’ve got to continue to creatively argue for your position until it’s clear that you absolutely can’t win. So even if you lose, you’ve at least exhausted every possibility.

In most cases, the law is going to favor the buyer. This is a doctrine that goes back at least 1,600 years and can be found in the Jewish Talmud. It’s called takkanat ha-shuk or “The Ordinance of the Marketplace,” and it protects innocent buyers in good faith.

There are a number of cases in the art world that deal with the question of just how “innocent” the buyer is and how many “red flags” (i.e., warnings that the deal was fraudulent) were present at the time of purchase. For example, if a random guy on the street has an honest-to-goodness Picasso painting in the back of his truck and offers to sell it to you for a thousand bucks… that’s clearly a stolen Picasso. If you buy the painting, you’re not going to be able to keep it when the real owner comes looking for it.

The real problems arise when, instead of a sketchy guy on the street, the seller is one of the most respected and reputable art dealers in the entire world.

But I’ve also been doing this for 43 years and know that you can’t win a case and also bankrupt your client. Winning can involve ego gratification, but if you’re going to win at the expense of the client, it’s not worth it. Winning matters, but winning the right way matters more—and that means honestly and cost-effectively. And I’m proud to say that my record reflects that I’ve been able to do that.

What does it take to be a successful lawyer in this type of industry?

You mentioned the Talmud, and I understand that you’re an ordained rabbi. Do you find that your roles as rabbi and lawyer ever overlap?

My role as a rabbi intersects my role as an attorney because Jewish law trains you to be incredibly sensitive to distinctions. I oftentimes say that my easiest day in yeshiva was harder than my hardest day at Columbia Law School. Not only does Jewish law really sharpen the mind, it also has sort of seen everything because it’s been around for so many centuries. With virtually every case you come up against, there is something you can apply from Jewish law. You can even come up with creative

It requires a great deal of business and financial sophistication to be able to deal with these cases. You have to be able to think on your feet and have the skill to look at numbers and figure out what’s wrong. It’s funny, my father was actually brilliant when it came to math. He could look at any math problem and just solve it. I think I must have gotten some of what he had because I’ve always had a natural ability for seeing flaws in financial presentations. That helps me not just in the art world, but also in corporate matters that I litigate every day.

Perhaps more importantly, being a lawyer in this business requires you to truly care about your clients. I’ve been very fortunate in that my clients have overwhelmingly been honest, decent folks that have been a pleasure to work with. As a lawyer, you tend to see people at their lowest points, when they’ve been wrongly accused or cheated in some way. At these times, they don’t need just an attorney—they also need a friend, a counselor, a sage, a warrior, and a shoulder to lean on. It’s my job to be all of those things for them. My clients keep coming back, so I guess they feel they’ve found a home. ♦