< Back to front page Text size – +

Court awards valuable painting to Concord woman's estate

E-mail|Link|Comments () October 18, 2010 11:10 AM

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

A painting possibly worth much as $800,000 that was recovered after being stolen decades ago should be returned to a Concord woman's estate, rather than given to the insurance company that made a much smaller payment on her loss, a state appeals court ruled today.

Helen S. Thompson's Concord home was burglarized in 1975 and the thieves made off with a 1765 painting of Thompson's ancestors, John Apthorp and his two daughters, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled. The painting had been appraised by a Boston art dealer at $25,000. The former Northern Assurance Co. paid Thompson a total of $32,500, the policy's limit, for the theft of the painting and other valuable items.

Fast forward to 2007. The painting was recovered and turned over to the Concord police.

One Beacon Insurance Group LLC, the successor to Northern Assurance, believing the painting was worth from $400,000 to $800,000, argued that the painting belonged to the company.

But the appeals court ruled, in a nine-page decision written by Judge Cynthia J. Cohen, that an agreement signed by Thompson allowed her estate two options: to turn the painting over to the insurance company or to simply pay the insurance company back the $25,000 it had paid out.

"The plain and unambiguous language … anticipates the possible reacquisition of the lost or stolen property, and, by the use of the word 'or,' provides that the insured may resort to either of two methods of compensating the insurer should that occur," the court said.

"One alternative is that the insured may turn over the recovered property to the insurer; however, the second alternative … is that the insured may pay back the amount that the insurer paid for that particular loss," the court said, upholding a lower court decision.

The picture was painted by Angelica Kauffman, a Swiss painter who worked in Italy and England, mostly in the neoclassical style, the court said.