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Is There an Expert in the House? Thomson v. Christie's: The Case of the Houghton Urns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2005

Stephanie G. Vyas
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia. Email: svyas@interchange.ubc.ca

Extract

The May 2004 decision of the London High Court in the matter of Thomson v. Christie's captured the interest of the salacious British press for its glamorous players: the Canadian heiress, the English aristocrat, and the international auction house. Taylor Thomson, the daughter of billionaire newspaper baron, Lord Thomson of Fleet, sued both the Marquess of Cholmondeley, a bachelor filmmaker with a fortune valued at over £100 million, and Christie's Auction House, for misrepresenting a pair of gilt and porphyry urns she purchased from Cholmondeley at a Christie's sale in London in 1994 for just under £2 million.

Type
CASE NOTE
Copyright
© 2005 International Cultural Property Society

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