UK foundation discounts Beaverbrook's 'second thoughts'
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 | 4:37 PM AT
CBC News
Lawyers for the Beaverbrook U.K. Foundation are disputing allegations that Lord Beaverbrook tried to reclaim paintings from his Fredericton art gallery as early as 1960.
They made their remarks in an arbitration hearing in Fredericton on Tuesday, which is addressing a disagreement between the foundation and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery over who owns 133 paintings with a value of roughly $100 million.
Lawyers for the gallery argued last week that in 1960, Lord Beaverbrook tried retroactively to change the status of paintings he'd "gifted" to the gallery. They point to changes he made to the trust agreement governing his two charitable foundations.
They argue he made the changes so that the paintings would become "on loan" — allowing him eventually to reclaim them.
But foundation lawyer Timothy Youdan says the changes to the agreement were innocuous — little more than legal housekeeping. Youdan says documents show that from the beginning the trust agreement allowed the foundation to lend the paintings to the gallery.
This is a key issue in the arbitration: the gallery says Beaverbrook gave the paintings to New Brunswick, and that this is made evident by the fact that the press baron himself later had second thoughts.
The foundation says it has been the owner of the paintings all along and that Beaverbrook structured the trust agreement to allow that.
Another foundation lawyer, Kent Thomson, says there's no evidence that the foundation ever gave the paintings to the gallery as gifts. He says he'll submit evidence that gallery staff themselves acknowledged the foundation's ownership as recently as three years ago.
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