[frank_jaeger]

Was anyone else floored by this? Even in the extremely unlikely scenario of Doig actually painting a piece he would disavow, how is the greater good served by going forward with the case? The can of worms the precedent would set are shocking. I would have a genuinely hard time proving my whereabouts 4 years ago, let alone 4 decades. This just seems like such an unreasonable expectation.

[dragonwriter]

> The can of worms the precedent would set are shocking.

Not really.

> I would have a genuinely hard time proving my whereabouts 4 years ago, let alone 4 decades.

Its a civil case, and the standard of proof on either side is just a "preponderance of the evidence" -- that is, better evidence than the other side has. Its not proof in any kind of absolute sense.

And the judge, in ruling the case had to go to trial, seemed to think Doig had pretty strong proof, just not so indisputable as to make a trial unnecessary.

There's a big gap between getting to trial and winning.

[rwallace]

There's also a big question about whether winning is actually necessary in the typical case.

Think about it: if this sets precedent, anyone with enough money who dislikes you for any reason can ruin you by filing a bogus lawsuit about something you putatively did a few decades ago. Sure, in theory you could eventually win based on preponderance of the evidence. In practice, unless you're a multimillionaire like Doig, the legal costs will bankrupt you before that.

Still think it was okay for the judge to send this to trial?

[girvo]

What you've described can already happen, today, without any new precedent.

[dragonwriter]

The judge sending this to trial was following well established law; even if trial court decisions did set precedent, there would be nothing new for it to set: that anyone can file a lawsuit based on actions that are current enough to be within the relevant statute of limitations even if what is necessary to present a colorable legal claim is a disputed claim about facts in the distant past is not only settled law, it's hard to see how the legal system could function if it weren't the case. If it weren't, all you would need to prevent a perfectly valid case from being prosecuted is to identify a critical fact to the case that occurred far enough in the past and invent a bogus dispute over it.

[Zikes]

Assuming the plaintiff is somehow correct and it is a Peter Doig painting, this doesn't sound remotely fair to me:

Some 16 year old kid paints something, figures it's worth $100 and sells it for that amount. 40 years later it's now worth ~25 million dollars. The original creator never promised that value to the buyer. On the very remote chance that Peter Doig loses the case, what could he realistically owe? The buyer still has exactly what they paid for, and nothing less. The buyer didn't buy the painting with the expectation that it would someday be worth millions. I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment.

[icebraining]

The buyer still has exactly what they paid for, and nothing less.

No, he has now a less credible work attributed to Doig. Credibility is worth money.

I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment.

You can if the stock was already worth 250000:1 and then the CEO made allegedly false claims that crashed the price.

[Zikes]

Doig was a nobody at age 16, else the painting wouldn't have sold for $100. The buyer bought a nice-looking painting from some kid in a correctional facility, not a world-famous painter. There was no promise or expectation that it would significantly increase in value.

[jdmichal]

The value at purchase time is irrelevant to this case, the same way the purchase price of stock is irrelevant to its current value when sold. If it is by Doig, it would have a current value >>> its value otherwise. If Doig says he didn't paint it when he did, he is directly destroying that difference in value.

[CoryG89]

I agree with this, but can someone really be held liable for something like this? I assume the painting did not come with a contract that states the artist/seller must always claim the work, from now to forever?

[icebraining]

Not claiming his work is different from actively denying having made it. You don't need a contract to be sued for causing damages by knowingly making false claims.

Assuming he's actually the author, he's in a way "defaming the painting".

[Retra]

He is only proving the invalidity of evaluating the price of a painting based on the name of the artist.

[visarga]

It's a painting. The value is in its esthetic, which has not degraded over the 40 years.

Anyway, I think all damages should be capped at the original price point, 100$, even in the absurd case the judge sides with the buyer.

[anjc]

> I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment

But if you buy stock which explodes in value - even if you didn't expect its value to go up - you'd expect to be able to sell it at the market value as genuine stock, no?

[pbartlow]

Fletcher and I are suing Doig not for merely disavowing the painting. After a year of research and ridicule from Doig and his dealer, we put it in auction. They threatened lawsuit and killed the sale. Our complaint is for interference of business. He can't do that if he is the real artist. What he will owe us is what we would have gotten if he had stayed out of it. We have plenty of evidence and his behavior and character is quite consistent with what made him a guest of the Correctional Centre in the first place. Wait for the real story when the book comes out.

[Sanddancer]

That's not what this case is about. This is about who painted a work of art that could potentially be worth many millions of dollars. Peter Doig was living a pretty nomadic life at the time, and a lot of public records haven't been digitized due to time and cost. So at the moment, this is a he said/she said game, and a lawsuit like this is one of the only ways to be able to file the proper requests to search through the boxes and boxes of old records to get documentation one way or another as to who painted it.

[Retra]

I don't see any reason why the court system should be used to resolve this kind of question. The value of a painting is entirely subjective, and if the person who painted it is used as a factor in the price, that is just a failing of the evaluator. If I priced a painting based on the weather in Guam in 1920, there shouldn't need to be a court ruling concerning attempts to figure out what the weather was like that year.

[dagw]

I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment.

No, but if you bought stock in a tiny startup that later increase 250,000:1 you can sue the company if they claim that the stock you claim to own isn't valid any more. That was basically half the plot of that Facebook movie they made.

[cpncrunch]

>how is the greater good served by going forward with the case?

Because the person who bought the painting is losing millions of dollars.

I'm surprised this has gone to court. Surely there must be easier ways of resolving the identity of the artist who painted this.

[an_ko]

The person who bought the painting is not losing millions of dollars, only failing to gain them.

Unless of course the original price they paid for the painting was millions of dollars. I doubt that, given they bought it off of a 17-year-old fresh out of prison.

By the time the case is over, they'll probably be in the negative. Pure sunk cost fallacy.

[chimeracoder]

> The person who bought the painting is not losing millions of dollars, only failing to gain them. By the time the case is over, they'll probably be in the negative. Pure sunk cost fallacy

This is an example of the endowment effect (fear of losing value that one perceives to already have), not sunk cost. Sunk cost would be if they continue the trial based on the amount of money they have already spent in fees, as opposed to the money they believe they can recoup later.

(Even that isn't necessarily sunk cost, because legal fees can be covered by the losing party in egregious cases, though that's unlikely here).

[intopieces]

>Unless of course the original price they paid for the painting was millions of dollars.

The retired corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, 62, said he bought the painting for $100 from a man named Pete Doige (spelled with an e), whom he met in 1975 in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

But that's beside the point. If it's worth $Xm, it can be used as collateral for a loan. And it's probably also insured for a certain amount.

[rdtsc]

It is up to the loan company then to ascertain if it is worth that much, let them sue the artist.

> If it's worth $Xm, it can be used as collateral for a loan

It is worth only that much if it is authentic. The "if" is pretty big it seems.

[icebraining]

The person who bought the painting is not losing millions of dollars, only failing to gain them.

Economically, there's little difference.

[chimeracoder]

> Economically, there's little difference.

There's a difference economically, because the derivative of marginal utility with respect to income is (generally) negative. In other words, utility is concave with respect to the origin[0].

This makes a difference because, in many circumstances, people are more willing to insure against loss than they are to insure against gain.

It also makes difference legally, as well as financially, because assets can be used to collateralize loans, etc.

[0](That's the first derivative of marginal utility, which is the second derivative of the income-utility function).

[theseatoms]

> There's a difference economically, because the derivative of marginal utility with respect to income is (generally) negative. In other words, utility is concave with respect to the origin[0].

Sure.. many economic models make this simplifying assumption. But each man defines his own utility functions, by their very nature.

[cpncrunch]

>It also makes difference legally, as well as financially, because assets can be used to collateralize loans, etc.

But how will that make a difference legally in this court case ?

[matthewowen]

From the article, it sounds like there are. It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig.

But the owner of this painting isn't happy with that, and wants to appeal to authorities. At some point, courts are the authority you reach.

[qbrass]

My guess is he's building hype around the painting to try and drum the price up.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Doig should paint a copy of Doige's work. Would go for millions from the publicity.

[Nadya]

>It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig.

I noticed the extra "e" on the painting too. Either that is common for Peter to sign, he changed his name to drop the "e", or he forgot how to spell his own name when he was 17. Or someone forged his name as a signature onto the painting but didn't know how to spell "Doig" and didn't bother to look it up hoping they could pass the painting off for millions of dollars.

[blakeyrat]

The article has quite clearly proven there was a man named Peter Doige who was in that correctional institution at the correct time and who painted landscapes.

It's just a different man from Peter Doig.

It's not a "forgery" made after Peter Doig became famous, there was no purposeful deceit here; it's simply another painting from another person who happens to have a similar name. It's coincidence.

[mark-r]

Not proven, merely provided evidence. They didn't actually search the records back far enough to prove there was a Peter Doige in the prison at the time in question. Nor do they have anything other than the sister's word that he painted landscapes.

I must say that it's one of the most remarkable coincidences I've heard of.

[dagw]

Nor do they have anything other than the sister's word that he painted landscapes.

The prisons former art teacher also claims to recognize Doige (with an E) as a former student and claims to remember him painting a painting at least very similar to the one in question. The owner of the painting also claims that the person he bought the painting off of joined the Seafarers International Union shortly after he bought the painting off of him and the Seafarers have a record of a Peter Doige during that time, but not a Peter Doig.

[Nadya]

>There was no purposeful deceit here; it's simply another painting from another person who happens to have a similar name. It's coincidence.

I'm not sure why you so quickly cross that idea out when there are millions of dollars on the line. I'm sure if Doig's paintings were worthless this case wouldn't be seeing the light of day. There is a plausible reason for purposeful deceit in trying to pass Doige's painting off as Doig's painting so the owner could profit millions.

If the painting was completely worthless I'd be inclined to believe that there isn't a chance in hell of purposeful deceit going on because there wouldn't be motivation to do so.

[NamTaf]

Except it was painted when Doig was 17, before he was famous and so at the time there was no reason to imitate some kid hundreds of kilometres away?

[_quick_q]

I'm confused by your comment. The article mentions an entirely different person (now deceased) with that name (Peter Doige) and his sister has supported the whereabouts (high school, prison, etc). Are you suggesting that the painting is (a) authentic Peter Doig, but he is lying about it, or (b) that it is a bad forgery?

[Nadya]

I'm suggesting it is the wrong person. With the suggestion that due to the amount of money involved there is motivation to pass off artwork as Doig's when it is not.

People have a history of scamming for a personal profit. Throwing some artist's name on a painting when their paintings are worth millions, claiming they painted it decades ago, and trying to sell it for millions isn't too far-fetched of a scam. Maybe the artist doesn't remember 40 years ago and just says "Yeah, sure, whatever. I painted that 40 years ago." and you just made yourself $8,000,000 for paying someone down the street $80 for a painting.

[_quick_q]

Your original comment seems very much to suggest anything but that you believe it is the wrong person. That is the source of my confusion and I think possibly the others that replied.

[jamie_ca]

Also, the ID card for Mr Doige posted in the article is a few years off Mr Doig's birthdate on wikipedia...

[pavlov]

The art world is full of forgeries. Normally the artist is long dead, so the authenticity of a work is evaluated by experts. If a work is deemed fake, the owner will just have to swallow his losses.

In this case, one would expect the artist himself to be the most credible expert... But apparently someone disagrees.

[blakeyrat]

The person who bought the painting paid $100 for it in the 1970s.

The only money he's "missing" is theoretical money that might exist if it turns out the painting is actually by Doig. Right now, there's no damages, and it's ridiculous that the judge accepted this case.

[pbartlow]

How do you expect the painting to "turn out" to be by Peter Doig, if he is lying? What he would have us believe is that there was another young man with 90% the same name who painted a landscape that the senior Contemporary expert called "Wonderful early Peter Doig", and by coincidence they were both from Canada and it just happened to be the one year of his life when Doig was not in school or working. Oh, and the inmate had been busted for LSD. Doig has paintings named Blotter, Windowpane and Orange Sunshine.

[AlexandrB]

> Because the person who bought the painting is losing millions of dollars.

By that logic I should be suing the lottery because I lost millions of dollars when my numbers weren't picked.

[jules]

Did he buy the painting for millions? I don't see that in the article, but if so, then maybe that person should have asked him before buying.

[teh_klev]

About a third of the way down the article it says:

>The retired corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, 62, said he bought the painting for $100 from a man named Pete Doige (spelled with an e), whom he met in 1975 in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

In short, no.

[JoeAltmaier]

He bought it for $150. Not million, just dollars.