Thursday, December 04, 2014

Perelman’s Lawsuit Against Gagosian Dismissed

New York Times story here.  First Department decision here.  The case had been on life support for some time (although not everyone noticed):  everything but the fraud claim had been thrown out earlier this year, and this decision got rid of that claim too, on the grounds that (a) Perelman, a "sophisticated" plaintiff, could not demonstrate reasonable reliance on the alleged fraud, because he "conducted no due diligence" of his own, and (b) statements about the value of art (which is what the fraud claim was about in this case) "constitute non-actionable opinion."  Felix Salmon nailed this one from the start.