Not a very pleasant email to receive ! 

I think the lawyer's reply to your letter will be - see my first letter about the youtube videos, rather than giving specifics or going into details about misstatements.

I would be inclined just to remind him/her of the fair comment or reasonable opinion defence to defamation claims.

It might not hurt either to mention the several clearly false provenance documents that accompanied some of the auctioned items, since their bogus nature is easier to establish than the porcelain items themselves, and the lawyers may not be aware of these documents . 

Good luck !

Not concerned about it, but you are right of course.  I suspect I'll hear from the lawyer again, or maybe not. If so I'll direct him to the fraud so many have seen. Of course the big giveaway, beyond the sad quality of the objects, is..who in their right mind would accept 3 cents on the dollar for authentic things.  Xuande mark and period blue and yellow plate for a couple grand..when they go for nearly a million..

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/important-chinese-art-from-the-collection-of-sir-quo-wei-lee-hk0824/lot.127.html

The whole thing is ridiculously funny.  

Best Peter

Nasty business. Just read said email.

I believe your rebuttal of opinion and fact to be well founded argument against said statements by the plaintiff. However the argument of 'few dollars' is irrelevant

It is obvious that Lauren auctions and their other offshoot Eden auctions are concerned about negative publicity about sales of fake porcelain.

I doubt that they will just go away like that without further notice and or demands via an injunction.

Hope all goes well for you with respect to this action and if necessary I will lend my support in anyway possible.

Mark

How unpleasant for you, Peter.  If there is anything we can do to support you, then let us know.  Truth is the defence and very often truth comes down to opinion where art is concerned so I don't really see that as an issue. 

The main issue is not that they were selling fake items, but the allegation that they were knowingly selling fakes with intent to deceive etc.  I think it is quite vital that you do as Tam suggests regarding the false provenance as that is not a matter of opinion.

It might also be worth re-reading and possibly editing out anything that may be considered provocative ie based on opinion but sounding like fact.  Hope it is ok to make that suggestion, sorry, if I am out of line: I used to moderate a forum like this and we often had similar legal issues, most of which went away, you will be glad to hear.

Best wishes,

Julia

I pretty clearly stated in the pieces I was offering an opinion, I always do.  I also said in one spot it's possible they don't know the items are copies of antiques. THough I find this highly improbable as they represent themselves as experts. 

Lauren Gallery has the only auction website I've ever seen where the names of the principles, experts, auctioneer or any staff members do not appear anywhere. Curiously, under their listed services they do not mention they do auctions?  It's all very peculiar.

For them to go forward with any action would be very inadvisable, as I'm sure their attorney has told them. The resulting publicity would be very damaging, much more so than a few posts by us.  Not to mention the apparent use of fabricated of original sales receipts/documents. 

Best Peter

Dear Peter,

Correct. Laugh at their threat. Don't lose any sleep over this one, they won't pursue it. They are trying to put the frighteners on you. How appropriate a trick for Hallowe'en.

They would not want any bad publicity were this to go to court, so I don't think you should expect that it will. They are selling fakes, as they doubtless know, and the fakes won't stand up in court once expert witness rise against them.

Even so, should you need any additional support, as other members have suggested in this thread, tell us. I think that between us we have the connections to be able to muster a more impressive support in your defence than these ridiculous galleries can even begin to imagine!

Alan

I also have eMails from purchasers who contacted me post sale and getting their items, finding our posts afterwards. They were not happy to say the least once the pieces were in hand.  

As an aside, I checked with the Georgia Board of Auctioneers website,  Lauren Galleries with a variant spelling does appear. I wonder if they are compliant with state laws on representation of items being sold.  I do know their failure to place their Auction license number on all advertising and promotions is a violation of Georgia state law.  They actually have failed to do so on their own site as well as I previously mentioned.  Perhaps it's just an oversight....

Then of course there is this, Georgia State Laws regarding Business practices.... 

https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-10/chapter-1/article-15/part-1/10-1-372/

Dear Peter,

I believe that you are in conditions to make them very worry.

You can tell them that you have let say some thousand people accessing your sites and you will invite publicly everyone who has purchased a fake item from them to join in prevision of a class action against them.

They will fly away from USA I think.

Giovanni

Peter, that is a very good point: the bad publicity from such a lawsuit would cause huge damage to their reputation. 

Everyone who has bought Asian art from them will be rushing to check their purchase and if any turn out to be not what they thought they had bought ....

... maybe you will have to claim defamation!  ? 

Julia

How come the FBI can't shut this sort of thing down? I mean, what they are doing would be considered interstate fraud, right? ? 

Dear Peter: I greatly admired your courage at the time in bringing this to everyone's attention. I share the feeling of others here that they are just trying to frighten you off and that there is no real intention to file a lawsuit. Although I have no doubt that you would prevail in any lawsuit that is filed, my one word of caution is that even the most absurd lawsuits can be very damaging to a defendant. Many people do not realize that the law has a slow and majestic process in which after a complaint is filed with a court, various automatic events occur regarless of the merits of the case or lack thereof.   These include the need to get an attorney to file a Response to the Complaint with the Court usually in 30 days, a request for Interrogatories, a Discovery process, a request for Depositions etc. All of this causes a great deal of inconvenience and can, if you cannot represent yourself or have a friend who is an attorney and who will represent you pro bono, result in significant legal fees long before the matter gets anywhere near a judge or before you can file a Motion for Dismissal. I'm not implying that this should cause you to withdraw anything you have stated but some caution in handling the matter is in order. The above notwithstanding, I think their attorney is wrong because there was clearly no malice involved on your part. Unlike in the United Kingdom where lawsuits for defamation can be won on often slender grounds, lawsuits for defamation usually do not succeed in the United States  unless there is evidence of malice or a clear intent to do harm to the Plaintiff gratutiously. Moreover, I think they might need to be prove that you harmed them and such evidence would be exceedingly difficult to obtain.  You were just giving your opinion as a widely-respected expert on Asian art and you have given similar opinions about other purveyors of Asian art of dubious age and provenance. In this, regard you were acting somewhat like an opera or music critic simply giving an opinion. Also, I think you were simply exercising your First Amendment rights. I hope and suspect that this will go away. It is just a clumsy attempt to silence you.

Best wishes,

Errol    

If you check the link I posted above it cites several possibilities for prosecution of a dishonest Auctioneer regarding misrepresentation of objects, provenance, etc. . The disclaimers most auctioneers use won't protect them particularly if they represent themselves as "experts" in certain disciplines. 

Hello Peter and fellow members,

That is extremely rude of them to do something like that, but very stupid at the same time. Their business is basically a scam. I am not a lawyer but there is a huge difference on legal grounds in making an occasional mistakes during the appraisal process and deliberately setting up the whole auction of ordinary fakes. That's basically a fraud, prepared and performed. Something tells me this could be the beginning of the end for their business. Most likely they will emerge later on under new name, trying to do the same thing. The problem is they made a move instead of staying quiet. I don't think they will last. They should be reported to the police. Can you open a store and start selling fake branded clothes? Of course not. So what's the difference here? They are doing exactly the same thing, they have set it up intentionally to get easy cash. That's a crime. They should be reported because they basically are scamming people. In my opinion they should be prosecuted, at the end of the day everybody deserves a fair trial 🙂

Regards,
Adrian

Posted by: ErrolL

Dear Peter: I greatly admired your courage at the time in bringing this to everyone's attention. I share the feeling of others here that they are just trying to frighten you off and that there is no real intention to file a lawsuit. Although I have no doubt that you would prevail in any lawsuit that is filed, my one word of caution is that even the most absurd lawsuits can be very damaging to a defendant. Many people do not realize that the law has a slow and majestic process in which after a complaint is filed with a court, various automatic events occur regarless of the merits of the case or lack thereof.   These include the need to get an attorney to file a Response to the Complaint with the Court usually in 30 days, a request for Interrogatories, a Discovery process, a request for Depositions etc. All of this causes a great deal of inconvenience and can, if you cannot represent yourself or have a friend who is an attorney and who will represent you pro bono, result in significant legal fees long before the matter gets anywhere near a judge or before you can file a Motion for Dismissal. I'm not implying that this should cause you to withdraw anything you have stated but some caution in handling the matter is in order. The above notwithstanding, I think their attorney is wrong because there was clearly no malice involved on your part. Unlike in the United Kingdom where lawsuits for defamation can be won on often slender grounds, lawsuits for defamation usually do not succeed in the United States  unless there is evidence of malice or a clear intent to do harm to the Plaintiff gratutiously. Moreover, I think they might need to be prove that you harmed them and such evidence would be exceedingly difficult to obtain.  You were just giving your opinion as a widely-respected expert on Asian art and you have given similar opinions about other purveyors of Asian art of dubious age and provenance. In this, regard you were acting somewhat like an opera or music critic simply giving an opinion. Also, I think you were simply exercising your First Amendment rights. I hope and suspect that this will go away. It is just a clumsy attempt to silence you.

Best wishes,

Errol    

Hi Erol,
Although I totally understand your point of view regarding the whole process but I must say I disagree with the main issue you have highlighted - a threat of a lengthy and very costly process - that's exactly what they are trying to say by sending this letter. Like I said I am aware how it looks in reality, but at the same time it cannot be that one should be afraid to report a crime or just simply speak loud about any kind of wrongdoing. That's the opposition to justice. Let's say there is somebody who doesn't have any money at all but knows that loaded guys are committing a fraud. Would that be fair if he was harassed by their lawyers, threatened with some silly lawsuits? If the law is organised this way, that means we made no progress at all since the Greek and Romans who started the whole thing. I know that's the reality, I am not naive, but it is totally wrong. Just sharing my thoughts here.

Regards,
Adrian