Art Basel Miami was buzzing Thursday over a legal decision in the bitter battle between former cronies, art dealer Larry Gagosian and billionaire collector Ronald Perelman, over the sale of multimillion-dollar artworks.
A Manhattan appeals court ruled Thursday that Revlon Chairman Perelman is too savvy to have been duped by his friend-turned-foe Gagosian. And that Perelman’s suit claiming Gagosian fleeced him on several deals “does not establish that [Gagosian] exercised control and dominance over [Perelman], who by [his] own description, frequently purchased, sold and exchanged works of art as investments,” a five-judge panel wrote in its unanimous decision, reports The Post’s Julia Marsh.
Perelman, an avid collector worth about $12 billion, sued Gagosian in 2012, claiming the dealer cheated him on a series of transactions, including allegedly puffing up the price of a $10.5 million Cy Twombly painting and a $12.6 million Richard Serra sculpture.
But the judges rejected Perelman’s argument that Gagosian “misrepresented the value of certain works of art and that the values were supported by market data, when they were not.”
The Appellate Division judges even criticized Perelman for not being more aggressive in the multimillion-dollar deal, saying he and his investment company MAFG Art Fund are “sophisticated plaintiffs” who “cannot demonstrate reasonable reliance because they conducted no due diligence; for example, they did not ask defendants, ‘Show us your market data,’” the ruling reads.
A lower court judge, Barbara Kapnick, had previously quipped that the wealthy former partners in a Hamptons bar should settle their differences “at a cocktail party.” After the ruling, there was obviously no love lost between the former friends.
Gagosian’s lawyer, Matthew Dontzin, said, “We’re gratified that the court unanimously dismissed the case. It supports our view that in keeping with Perelman’s lengthy history of unsuccessfully trying to use the courts to bully his business associates, this lawsuit was filed as a shameless pretext for Perelman’s refusal to pay what he owed the gallery. Justice was done.”
A Perelman rep countered: “We respectfully believe that the Appellate Division erred … as alleged in the complaint, Gagosian had unique and superior access to market data based on his status as a market maker, and he misrepresented that the prices for works of art that he sold to Mr. Perelman were based on that data when in truth, they were not. No amount of diligence would have uncovered the truth under these circumstances.”
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