High Court to Hear Miranda, Art Cases

Justices agree to decide issues about juvenile rights and Austria's claim
of immunity in a suit over Nazi-era theft of Klimt paintings.

By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON < The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to review the issue, raised in
a Los Angeles-area murder case, of whether juveniles must be warned of their
Miranda rights before they are questioned at a police station.

The court also dealt a setback to a West Los Angeles woman who is suing the
Austrian government seeking to recover six paintings of Gustav Klimt, which
she says were seized from her uncle by the Nazis in 1939.
In all, the justices agreed to hear 10 new cases. However, they took no
action on several of the most closely watched appeals, including the dispute
from California's U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals over the language in the
Pledge of Allegiance.

In the case of the paintings by Klimt, an Austrian artist who died in 1918,
judges in California had cleared Maria Altmann's suit to go forward in Los
Angeles. But the high court said it would hear the Austrian government's
claim that it has a "sovereign immunity" that shields it from foreign
lawsuits.

The paintings, estimated to be worth $150 million, are on display in the
government-run Austrian Gallery in Vienna. Klimt's works are considered
significant examples of the Art Nouveau style, which was popular in the late
19th and early 20th centuries.

In their appeal, Austrian authorities refer to the paintings as "national
treasures and part of the cultural heritage of the Austrian people" that
were left to the gallery by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a sugar magnate who fled
the Nazis and died in Zurich in 1945.

"Stripped to its essentials, this case concerns [the Austrians'] complicity
in the looting of the artworks," responded Altmann's lawyers.
They say Bloch-Bauer left his entire estate to two nieces and a nephew, only
one of whom < Altmann, age 87 > is still alive.

The case of Republic of Austria vs. Altmann will not be heard until early
next year, and it will not resolve ownership of the paintings. Instead, it
will decide only where Altmann's claim may be heard Vienna or Los Angeles.