The case of the Fang mask, sold for 150 euros to a second-hand dealer, then, thanks to the latter’s research, resold at auction for 4.2 million euros, has just experienced a new legal episode, Tuesday December 19, in Alès (Gard). Its first owners, Mr. and M.me X, who had sold it believing that it was worthless, had their request to cancel their transaction rejected.
Their lawyer, Me Frédéric Mansat-Jaffré, had invoked the principle according to which the “ error “ of the seller results in the nullity of a contract when it relates to the ” substance ” of the object of this contract (in this case the value of the object). The court refuses to follow him. He judges, regarding the sellers, that “their negligence and carelessness characterize the inexcusable nature of their error.”
Indeed, “there was a clear asymmetry of information, to the benefit of the sellers, and not the buyer, as to the essential qualities of the mask, in particular its authenticity and its origin”. The sellers knew that it had been brought from Africa by their ancestor, a colonial governor at the beginning of the 20th century.e century. Nevertheless, the court accuses, “They did not take any steps prior to the sale to have it valued, whereas today there are multiple possibilities to have their property valued free of charge.”
Flea market and truffles
This “absence of diligence by the sellers to assess the intrinsic value of the property sold contrasts with those carried out by the buyer, subsequent to the sale”. Indeed, the latter, while he carries out the activity ofe “itinerant and sedentary sales of furniture and second-hand flea markets; sale of truffles”, and that he therefore does not have “no specific knowledge of African art”requested three estimates.
At the Drouot Estimates auction house (“between 100 and 120 euros”), at FauveParis (“between 400 and 600 euros”) and at the Montpellier auction house, “approach which is not reserved for professionals”. That’s when “advanced research” have been done – “carbon-14 method coupled with mass spectrometry”Then “expertise of an ethnologist”. They made it possible to date the object and estimate it “between 300,000 and 400,000 euros”.
Therefore, the court orders the release of the precautionary seizure which had been carried out on the second-hand dealer’s bank accounts, with the aim of blocking the proceeds of the resale (or at least what remains of it). But, perhaps out of caution, he “dismisses provisional execution” of this decision, which could therefore only take effect at the end of the appeal procedure that the X can initiate.
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