Mistaken Identity or Malicious Scam? Art Experts Battle It Out

Expert witnesses played an interesting role in a recent high profile case out of the art world. The plaintiff, a former corrections officer at a Canadian detention facility, claimed that well-known painter Peter Doig created a 40-year-old piece of art but then denied it in order to thwart its sale. Doig, who is alive and well, was the defendant, testifying that he did not in fact paint this particular work, and that the case was “a scam.”

This scenario is unusual as is, asking a living artist to take the stand in defense. It’s even stranger given that before the trial even began, the plaintiff could produce zero evidence that Doig was ever incarcerated in Ontario, let alone during the specified time frame. The court nevertheless ruled that “the trial should move forward because there were disputes that could be resolved only following evidentiary submissions and live testimony.”

Given this stance, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the case turned into a battle of expert witnesses. The plaintiff chose an expert witness who, while he had 40 years of experience in art appraisal and authentication, did not have specific expertise in Doig’s work. It sounds like he put on a good show, “comparing types of paint, similarities in style, shapes and positioning, and repeated lineatures by superimposing lines from known paintings to the questioned ones.”

He certainly had good reason to be persuasive: the witness was actually one of the plaintiffs, and had a 25% interest in the proceeds. Doig’s defense team tried to have this “expert’s” testimony excluded (understandably), but the court found that “few experts testify out of the goodness of their heart,” and therefore did not “run afoul of the rule against employing expert witnesses on a contingency fee basis.” Whether or not you agree with that decision, the defense scored points either way. The expert’s testimony may have moved forward, but that arrangement did nothing to enhance his credibility.

The defense did find an art historian who was intimately familiar with Doig’s work, who deemed the other expert’s professional methodologies “unreliable” and his personal ethics “inappropriate.” The Law360 article detailing the case doesn’t provide as much detail on this witness’s testimony, but apparently it was compelling; “the defendants’ expert, who testified that he had significant familiarity with Doig’s work, may have persuaded the judge to rule in Doig’s favor not only because he questioned the methodology of the plaintiffs’ expert,” the author states, “but also because the defendant’s expert effectively questioned whether the plaintiff’s expert’s financial interest in the outcome of the case could have create unfair bias.”

We can pull a couple clear takeaways here: specificity matters, and integrity does, too. Even if both art experts were equally qualified, the defense team’s expert witness seems to have gained the upper hand through more detailed knowledge, and less questionable practices.

In the end, however, the evidence, not the experts, seems to have provided the “smoking gun” – or lack thereof – in the Doig case. The plaintiff never did manage to prove that the artist was actually in the detention center when the work was created, and the defense showed that another “Peter Doige” who liked to paint was, in fact, incarcerated at the time in question. As a result, the trial ended where it started: if you can’t prove the basics, even the best expert can’t win your case.