CONFLICTS OF LAW-CHOICE OF LAW-FOREIGN SOVEREIGN IMMUNITIES ACT

Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Found., 2022 U.S. LEXIS 2097, (S. Ct. April 21, 2022) (Kagan, J.)  Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court. Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA), 28 U. S. C. §1602 et seq., a foreign state or instrumentality is amenable in specified circumstances to suit in an American court. In this case, the plaintiffs brought such a suit to recover expropriated property. The question presented is what choice-of-law rule the court should use to determine the applicable substantive law. The answer is: whatever choice-of-law rule the court would use if the defendant were not a foreign-state actor, but instead a private party. Here, that means applying the forum State’s choice-of-law rule, not a rule deriving from federal common law. At issue is the ownership of an Impressionist painting depicting a Paris streetscape: Camille Pissarro’s Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain. Pissarro’s agent sold the painting in 1900 to Paul Cassirer, a member of a prominent German Jewish family owning an art gallery and publishing house. Some quarter century later, Lilly Cassirer inherited the painting and displayed it in her Berlin home. But in 1933, the Nazis came to power. After years of intensifying persecution of German Jews, Lilly decided in 1939 that she had to do anything necessary to escape the country. To obtain an exit visa to England, where her grandson Claude Cassirer had already relocated, she surrendered the painting to the Nazis. The underlying question in this case—which this opinion will not resolve—is whether the Cassirer family can get the painting back.

After informal efforts to recover the painting failed, Claude sued the Foundation in federal court in the Central District of California, near where he then lived. His complaint asserted various property-law claims, all alleging that he owned Rue Saint-Honoré and was entitled to its return. And because the Foundation is an “instrumentality” of the Kingdom of Spain, the complaint 2022 U.S. LEXIS 2097, *5 Page 5 of 7 CLIFFORD RIEDERS invoked the FSIA to establish the court’s jurisdiction. See §1603(b) (describing an instrumentality as a legally separate but state-controlled entity). The FSIA governs whether a foreign state or instrumentality is amenable to suit in an American court. It provides the sovereign actor with immunity unless the claim against it falls within a specified exception. See §§1605-1607. The complaint here asserted that the statute’s expropriation exception applied. That exception removes immunity for cases involving “rights in property taken in violation of international law.” §1605(a)(3). At a prior stage of this litigation, the courts below held that the Nazi confiscation of Rue Saint-Honoré brought Claude’s suit against the Foundation within the expropriation exception. See 461 F. Supp. 2d 1157, 1176-1177 (CD Cal. 2006), aff ’d, 616 F. 3d 1019, 1037 (CA9 2010) (en banc), cert. denied, 564 U.S. 1037, 131 S. Ct. 3057, 180 L. Ed. 2d 886 (2011). That determination, which is no longer at issue, meant that the suit could go forward. (Claude, though, would not live to see anything further; he passed away in 2010, and his heirs became the plaintiffs.) But go forward pursuant to what law? The courts had to decide whose property law (Spain’s? California’s?) should govern the suit, and thus determine the painting’s rightful owner. Resolving that question required application of a choice-of-law rule—a means of selecting which jurisdiction’s law governs the determination of liability. Yet there another issue lurked. For the parties contested which choice-of-law rule should apply—serving up, so to speak, a choice of choice-of-law principles. The Cassirer plaintiffs urged the use of California’s choice-of-law rule; the defendant Foundation advocated a rule based in federal common law. The courts below, relying on a minimally reasoned Ninth Circuit precedent, picked the federal option. See 153 F. Supp. 3d 1148, 1154 (CD Cal. 2015), aff ’d, 862 F. 3d 951, 961 (CA9 2017), cert. denied, 584 U. S. ___, 138 S. Ct. 1992, 201 L. Ed. 2d 270 (2018). That federal choice-of-law rule, they further held, commanded the use of Spanish (not Californian) property law to resolve the ownership issue. See 153 F. Supp. 3d, at 1155, aff ’d, 862 F. 3d, at 963. Finally, the courts below determined after a trial that under Spanish law the Foundation was the rightful owner, because it purchased Rue Saint-Honoré without knowing the painting was stolen and had held it long enough to gain title through possession. See No. 05-cv-03459 (CD Cal., Apr. 30, 2019), ECF Doc. 621, pp. 26-30, aff ’d, 824 Fed. Appx. 452, 454-455 (CA9 2020). The Cassirers sought our review, limited to a single issue: whether a court in an FSIA case raising nonfederal claims (relating to property, torts, contracts, and so forth) should apply the forum State’s choice-of-law rule, or instead use a federal one. We granted certiorari, 594 U. S. ___, 142 S. Ct. 55, 210 L. Ed. 2d 1024 (2021), because that question has generated a split in the Courts of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit stands alone in using a federal choice-of-law rule to pick the applicable substantive law. All other Courts of Appeals to have addressed the issue apply the choice-of-law rule of the forum State. We agree with that more common approach, and now vacate the judgment below.