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Who needs creative law professors when reality hands us crazy issue spotters like these?
Catholic University of America is a private university created by Catholic bishops generally with Papal approval, as opposed to a specific order, like the Jesuits. The school found itself in possession of one of the two remaining complete costumes worn by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz. It had been sitting in a shoebox in the recesses of the school… exactly where you’d expect to find one of the most iconic symbols of the golden age of Hollywood.
So the school got the item appraised and planned to auction it off, hoping to fetch somewhere between $800K and $1.2 million for it.
But 81-year-old Barbara Ann Hartke filed a lawsuit to stop the auction. Hartke argues that the dress was a gift to her late uncle, Father Gilbert Hartke, who ran the school’s drama department and the school is confusing this personal gift — which belongs to his estate — with a gift to the school that he accepted on its behalf. Judge Paul Gardephe of the SDNY issued a preliminary injunction halting the sale earlier this week.
For its part, the school argues that, as a Dominican, Father Hartke’s poverty vows meant he couldn’t accept gifts and therefore the dress has to belong to the school. This is where someone far more versed in canon law would probably argue that the fact CUA isn’t a Dominican school matters, but that’s far beyond me. Plus, he’s legally free to have not followed that edict in this instance — he might have had purely sentimental interest in the dress — so this should give a hint at best to his mindset.
The school also collected statements from other relatives saying that they feel he’d want the school to have it, which is pretty weaksauce, but every little bit of insight into his mindset helps I suppose.
Hartke’s attorney has little sympathy for the “feels” of other family members, noting that there’s “absolutely no legal documentation of such a gift to the university,” in a statement to WTOP. There are contemporaneous news articles describing it as a gift to the school, which may not be controlling but suggest people understood it as the school’s at the time.
On the other hand, it’s hard to say the school openly and notoriously possessed this dress when it didn’t even realize where it was for decades. It also doesn’t help that after having it for years, the school never considered it something they could sell until immediately after finding it again.
So much going on here.
A rediscovered Wizard Of Oz dress sparks cutthroat legal battle [AV Club]
Catholic University’s evidence for why it owns ‘Wizard of Oz’ Dorothy dress [WTOP]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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