Over 20 years ago, I was getting into an elevator in my building and I opened the door and Randy Schoenberg was there. Randy was an old friend of mine. I actually knew his father, who was a very venerable judge in town, and I knew Randy because we had participated in a program called Inns of Court, which has mentors teaching mentees about law, sharing experiences, and the like. So I saw Randy. I said, “What are you doing here? He said, “Well, I left the big firm for a lot of reasons, and I’m trying to build up a practice on my own.” I said, “Are you renting from lawyers?” He said, “No, a real estate company in the building.” I said, “Randy, I need help. You’re a good lawyer and I’d love to work with you. Why don’t you come down to my office? Technically, you’ll be of counsel and a tenant, but I don’t think you’ll ever have to pay a rent check.”

Randy started with me. He wrote some brilliant briefs in a couple of cases and, as I thought, he was very, very capable, never wrote a rent check, and we arranged almost from the beginning that he would have a quarter of the firm. Not long thereafter, Randy earned himself the whole half of the firm, and that’s how we did it. I like 50/50 partnerships and he certainly was a huge asset.

During the course of Randy starting with me, he mentioned to me that he had a case involving some Jewish related issues. We’re both Jewish and so I was curious. I hadn’t heard anything about Nazi looted art at the time, and he proceeded to tell me a little bit about Mrs. Altmann’s case and how it was a long shot. Commentators were calling him Don Quixote. Nobody was sure what could happen, but did I mind that we would pursue the case even though, in the end, we might have a shortfall. I said no. I said, for a lot of reasons: my heritage, my belief in him, my belief in the case.

But at the time neither one of us could possibly have foreseen – well, we were confident about, hopefully, helping Mrs. Altmann in some way, but to be able to win before the Supreme Court on that kind of a voting basis is tremendous, and to help a Holocaust survivor in the sense that Maria fled but her family obviously was affected by the Austrian Anschluss, were just overwhelming facts.

So what had happened as far as the painting is concerned, as far as the case is concerned, is pretty well known to people across America, and Maria was played rather nicely by Helen Mirren. Maria was a niece of the Bloch-Bauers, two of the wealthiest people in Vienna and among the wealthier Jews obviously. There was a great Jewish culture, assimilated culture, in Vienna. This is just around the time World War One is breaking.

And as did so many wealthy people, the Bloch-Bauers served as patron and patroness for an up-and-coming artist, turned out to be Gustav Klimt, who was in fact in the forefront of what they call the Secession Movement in art. Gustav Klimt, in addition to doing the work that he was commissioned for, did some paintings for the Bloch-Bauers, and they were given to them, and they remained on the Bloch-Bauer wall after the World War. Klimt died young, unfortunately. Mrs. Bloch-Bauer unfortunately also died young of very natural causes. This is prior to anything happening with the Nazis.

Thereafter, the Nazis of course marched into Austria. The Anschluss occurred. They took over Austria. They had very anti-Semitic laws. They were just as bad as the German laws in terms of what was happening. And as a result, Maria and her young husband came across and came to the United States. That is very well portrayed in the movie, as is the basic attitude of the Austrian government.

Most museums in Europe are state run, so we really were dealing with the government of Austria. And what happened in the case is we kept winning, and at a certain point the Austrians we thought would at least come to the table and try to settle the case in some manner because Maria was an older woman and we didn’t want to subject her to what she had to be subjected to. And also, it wasn’t a matter of dollars and sense. We wanted to get some recognition of her rights and the sentimental attachment of the painting.

The rest is history. Basically, we were victorious at every point. After we won in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the United States government intervened on behalf of the Austrian museum. Now, they didn’t do it because we think the Bush administration was anti-Semitic or anything like that. It looks like it was because the Bush administration’s attitude was you do not impinge on sovereignty and this was the ultimate impingement on sovereignty, to tell the Austrian government and the Austrian museum what they should do with these world famous paintings. When we went before the Supreme Court, they were represented not just by their own counsel but they had also the US government had joined them.

It was a fascinating day at the court. It’s obviously a thrill to be there and to look at the packed courthouse. We talked to people from public radio. We’ve had a lot of people from around the world. There were counsels from various countries who were very concerned that, if there was a Holocaust decision that went in the direction of Maria, it might have precedential effect for them. So we’re talking about the Japanese who are facing potential suits as a result of putting Chinese women and others in brothels, the French railroads for transporting Jews to concentration camps, the German industrial companies for employing, on a slave labor basis, the Jewish laborers, many of whom ended up dying in the process.

Two things about that. One, it was very evident to everyone, not just the press but I believe the Supreme Court, that if they were gonna rule for us, they wanted to make it as narrow as possible because the other side kept talking about the floodgates and the like. I mean, frankly, we represented a client. The floodgates are not our problem, but we were happy that it was able to be narrowed down.

When we left the courtroom, we thought we had done a reasonable job and we were hopeful, but of course some of the people came up to us and said, “Good job. You did very well, but you’re not gonna beat them.” You know, it’s a Rehnquist court, all kinds of other things that they said. And we ended up being victorious in the case.