LOS ANGELES, March 18, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Georges Marciano, co-founder of Guess? Inc. won a two year legal battle with the famed Beverly Hills auction house Christie's, Inc., when attorneys for the company agreed to provide documents that Marciano had been seeking in connection with the theft of his art works valued at tens of millions of dollars.
Marciano represented himself during a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court. Attorneys for Christie's had sought to quash Mr. Marciano's motion seeking documents related to the missing art. However, during the hearing, Judge Elisabeth White suggested both sides meet in the court's jury room and see whether some agreement could be reached. After meeting for 45 minutes, Mr. Marciano and Christie's attorneys reached an agreement providing Mr. Marciano with key documents that he had been seeking. The agreement is seen as a key step in Mr. Marciano's efforts to recover his missing art works.
Marciano maintains these documents will be crucial to investigating the disappearance of more than 600 works of art, including original paintings by Indiana, Rauschenberg, and Ruscha; monumental sculptures, including Chamberlain sculpture and Miro sculptures; prints, including Warhol, Chagall, Indiana, Dine, Jasper Jones and more; a wine collection of over 26,000 bottles, including Petrus, Margaux, Lafitte, Yquiem, and Cheval Blanc Vintage from the 1970's to 2000, and sales proceeds.
After the hearing, Marciano declared, "Today, my position was vindicated and now and I look forward to pursuing the return of my missing art collection. I have been asking Christie's to produce these documents for over two years."
In 2007, Marciano sued several of his former employees and others on a variety of charges including art theft and negligence, theft of millions of dollars worth of funds, art, and wine and the destruction of his computer, financial and personal records, as well as conspiring to commit theft. Mr. Marciano has been seeking records from Christie's to help in legal actions against his former accountant, a former Christie's employee, and several ex-employees.
These actions allege that five former employees, a former accountant, a former employee of Christie's and an art shipping company illegally conspired to deliver a one-two punch to Marciano -- first stealing millions of dollars worth of funds and then tens of millions in fine art.
"I was shocked at this massive betrayal by people I had known, loved and trusted for so many years," Marciano said upon the discovery of this massive theft. "This is one of the largest, if not the largest, art thefts as measured by the quantity of art stolen in the history of America," he said.
While no criminal charges have been brought by law enforcement to date, Marciano hopes that his efforts to prove civil liability will produce a body of evidence that can be used to bring this virtually unprecedented conspiracy and theft into the criminal courts in the future.
As a first step, Marciano's attorneys have brought a civil action which seeks to prove that he was damaged in an amount of more than $60 million. He is seeking those damages, plus punitive or exemplary damages, to punish the wrongdoers for egregious conduct and to deter the wrongdoers and others from similar conduct in the future.