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Los Angeles Judge Refuses To Toss Armenian Church Suit Against Getty

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  • Los Angeles Judge Refuses To Toss Armenian Church Suit Against Getty

    LOS ANGELES JUDGE REFUSES TO TOSS ARMENIAN CHURCH SUIT AGAINST GETTY OVER SACRED BIBLE PAGES

    Washington Post
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/los-angeles-judge-refuses-to-toss-armenian-church-suit-against-getty-over-sacred-bible-pages/2011/11/04/gIQAJw1tlM_story.html
    Nov 4 2011

    LOS ANGELES - The J. Paul Getty Museum on Thursday lost its bid for
    dismissal of the Armenian church lawsuit demanding the return of pages
    ripped from a sacred handwritten Armenian Bible dating back to 1256.

    Superior Court Judge Abraham Khan denied Getty's motion to dismiss the
    claim and ordered four months of mediation in an attempt to resolve
    the dispute between the museum and the Western Prelacy of the Armenian
    Apostolic Church of America, which filed suit in June 2010 on behalf
    its mother church, the Lebanon-based Holy See of Cilicia.

    The suit accuses Getty of harboring stolen illuminated medieval
    manuscripts, saying they are spiritually and historically sacred
    church masterpieces.

    The lawsuit claims the church had the Bible authenticated in 1947 or
    1948 and it was returned with more than a half-dozen pages missing.

    The pages of painted parchment once formed the front pages of a larger
    work called the Zeyt'un Gospels.

    The church wants to send them to an Armenian museum in Yerevan so
    they can be reunited with the rest of the Bible.

    Getty officials say the more than half-dozen pages were legally
    acquired in 1994 for $950,000 from an anonymous private collector.

    The Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/vQW5zV ) said museum attorneys
    argued during Thursday's brief hearing that the lawsuit filing deadline
    expired decades ago.

    But the judge said he was unclear on the statute of limitations issue.

    Khan ordered mediation and another hearing on March 2 if the case
    isn't settled.

    Under California law, lawsuits to recover allegedly stolen artworks
    from a museum or art dealer must be filed no later than six years
    after the owner learns of their whereabouts.

    "We are confident that we hold legal title," the Getty Museum said
    in a statement after the ruling.

    Church attorney Lee Boyd said afterward that the museum failed to
    investigate the ownership history of the pages when it bought them
    from Armenian American heirs of a man the church says stole the pages
    in 1916.

    The Zeyt'un Gospels had briefly fallen into his hands when Turks
    expelled the Armenian community from Cilicia, then a region of the
    Ottoman Empire and now part of Turkey, during and after the World
    War I-era that Armenians term a genocide.

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