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Was anyone else floored by this? Even in the extremely unlikely scenario of Doig actually painting a piece he would disavow, how is the greater good served by g

Was anyone else floored by this? Even in the extremely unlikely scenario of Doig actually painting a piece he would disavow, how is the greater good served by going forward with the case? The can of worms the precedent would set are shocking. I would have a genuinely hard time proving my whereabouts 4 years ago, let alone 4 decades. This just seems like such an unreasonable expectation.

cpncrunch 10y ago
>how is the greater good served by going forward with the case? Because the person who bought the painting is losing millions of dollars. I'm surprised this has gone to court. Surely there must be easier ways of resolving the identity of the artist who painted this.
- matthewowen 10y ago
  From the article, it sounds like there are. It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig. But the owner of this painting isn't happy with that, and wants to appeal to authorities. At some point, courts are the authority you reach.
  - Nadya 10y ago
    >It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig. I noticed the extra "e" on the painting too. Either that is common for Peter to sign, he changed his name to drop the "e", or he forgot how to spell his own name when he was 17. Or someone forged his name as a signature onto the painting but didn't know how to spell "Doig" and didn't bother to look it up hoping they could pass the painting off for millions of dollars.
    - _quick_q 10y ago
      I'm confused by your comment. The article mentions an entirely different person (now deceased) with that name (Peter Doige) and his sister has supported the whereabouts (high school, prison, etc). Are you suggesting that the painting is (a) authentic Peter Doig, but he is lying about it, or (b) that it is a bad forgery?
      - Nadya 10y ago
        I'm suggesting it is the wrong person. With the suggestion that due to the amount of money involved there is motivation to pass off artwork as Doig's when it is not. People have a history of scamming for a personal profit. Throwing some artist's name on a painting when their paintings are worth millions, claiming they painted it decades ago, and trying to sell it for millions isn't too far-fetched of a scam. Maybe the artist doesn't remember 40 years ago and just says "Yeah, sure, whatever. I painted that 40 years ago." and you just made yourself $8,000,000 for paying someone down the street $80 for a painting.
        _quick_q 10y ago
        Your original comment seems very much to suggest anything but that you believe it is the wrong person. That is the source of my confusion and I think possibly the others that replied.
    - jamie_ca 10y ago
      Also, the ID card for Mr Doige posted in the article is a few years off Mr Doig's birthdate on wikipedia...
    - blakeyrat 10y ago
      The article has quite clearly proven there was a man named Peter Doige who was in that correctional institution at the correct time and who painted landscapes. It's just a different man from Peter Doig. It's not a "forgery" made after Peter Doig became famous, there was no purposeful deceit here; it's simply another painting from another person who happens to have a similar name. It's coincidence.
      - Nadya 10y ago
        >There was no purposeful deceit here; it's simply another painting from another person who happens to have a similar name. It's coincidence. I'm not sure why you so quickly cross that idea out when there are millions of dollars on the line. I'm sure if Doig's paintings were worthless this case wouldn't be seeing the light of day. There is a plausible reason for purposeful deceit in trying to pass Doige's painting off as Doig's painting so the owner could profit millions. If the painting was completely worthless I'd be inclined to believe that there isn't a chance in hell of purposeful deceit going on because there wouldn't be motivation to do so.
        NamTaf 10y ago
        Except it was painted when Doig was 17, before he was famous and so at the time there was no reason to imitate some kid hundreds of kilometres away?
        Nadya 10y ago
        Do you honestly think the owner of the painting would be arguing it is Doig's painting and not Doige's painting if there was no money to be made from it and Doig (currently, in the modern day, not 40 years ago) was a noname artist who's paintings were worthless? Yes or no please.
      - mark-r 10y ago
        Not proven, merely provided evidence. They didn't actually search the records back far enough to prove there was a Peter Doige in the prison at the time in question. Nor do they have anything other than the sister's word that he painted landscapes. I must say that it's one of the most remarkable coincidences I've heard of.
  - qbrass 10y ago
    My guess is he's building hype around the painting to try and drum the price up.
    - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
      Doig should paint a copy of Doige's work. Would go for millions from the publicity.
- jules 10y ago
  Did he buy the painting for millions? I don't see that in the article, but if so, then maybe that person should have asked him before buying.
  - teh_klev 10y ago
    About a third of the way down the article it says: >The retired corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, 62, said he bought the painting for $100 from a man named Pete Doige (spelled with an e), whom he met in 1975 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In short, no.
- an_ko 10y ago
  The person who bought the painting is not losing millions of dollars, only failing to gain them. Unless of course the original price they paid for the painting was millions of dollars. I doubt that, given they bought it off of a 17-year-old fresh out of prison. By the time the case is over, they'll probably be in the negative. Pure sunk cost fallacy.
  - intopieces 10y ago
    >Unless of course the original price they paid for the painting was millions of dollars. The retired corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, 62, said he bought the painting for $100 from a man named Pete Doige (spelled with an e), whom he met in 1975 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. But that's beside the point. If it's worth $Xm, it can be used as collateral for a loan. And it's probably also insured for a certain amount.
    - rdtsc 10y ago
      It is up to the loan company then to ascertain if it is worth that much, let them sue the artist. > If it's worth $Xm, it can be used as collateral for a loan It is worth only that much if it is authentic. The "if" is pretty big it seems.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > The person who bought the painting is not losing millions of dollars, only failing to gain them. By the time the case is over, they'll probably be in the negative. Pure sunk cost fallacy This is an example of the endowment effect (fear of losing value that one perceives to already have), not sunk cost. Sunk cost would be if they continue the trial based on the amount of money they have already spent in fees, as opposed to the money they believe they can recoup later. (Even that isn't necessarily sunk cost, because legal fees can be covered by the losing party in egregious cases, though that's unlikely here).
  - icebraining 10y ago
- pavlov 10y ago
  The art world is full of forgeries. Normally the artist is long dead, so the authenticity of a work is evaluated by experts. If a work is deemed fake, the owner will just have to swallow his losses. In this case, one would expect the artist himself to be the most credible expert... But apparently someone disagrees.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  The person who bought the painting paid $100 for it in the 1970s. The only money he's "missing" is theoretical money that might exist if it turns out the painting is actually by Doig. Right now, there's no damages, and it's ridiculous that the judge accepted this case.
  - pbartlow 10y ago
    How do you expect the painting to "turn out" to be by Peter Doig, if he is lying? What he would have us believe is that there was another young man with 90% the same name who painted a landscape that the senior Contemporary expert called "Wonderful early Peter Doig", and by coincidence they were both from Canada and it just happened to be the one year of his life when Doig was not in school or working. Oh, and the inmate had been busted for LSD. Doig has paintings named Blotter, Windowpane and Orange Sunshine.
- AlexandrB 10y ago
  > Because the person who bought the painting is losing millions of dollars. By that logic I should be suing the lottery because I lost millions of dollars when my numbers weren't picked.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  He bought it for $150. Not million, just dollars.
Zikes 10y ago
Assuming the plaintiff is somehow correct and it is a Peter Doig painting, this doesn't sound remotely fair to me: Some 16 year old kid paints something, figures it's worth $100 and sells it for that amount. 40 years later it's now worth ~25 million dollars. The original creator never promised that value to the buyer. On the very remote chance that Peter Doig loses the case, what could he realistically owe? The buyer still has exactly what they paid for, and nothing less. The buyer didn't buy the painting with the expectation that it would someday be worth millions. I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  That's not what this case is about. This is about who painted a work of art that could potentially be worth many millions of dollars. Peter Doig was living a pretty nomadic life at the time, and a lot of public records haven't been digitized due to time and cost. So at the moment, this is a he said/she said game, and a lawsuit like this is one of the only ways to be able to file the proper requests to search through the boxes and boxes of old records to get documentation one way or another as to who painted it.
  - Retra 10y ago
    I don't see any reason why the court system should be used to resolve this kind of question. The value of a painting is entirely subjective, and if the person who painted it is used as a factor in the price, that is just a failing of the evaluator. If I priced a painting based on the weather in Guam in 1920, there shouldn't need to be a court ruling concerning attempts to figure out what the weather was like that year.
- anjc 10y ago
  > I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment But if you buy stock which explodes in value - even if you didn't expect its value to go up - you'd expect to be able to sell it at the market value as genuine stock, no?
- icebraining 10y ago
dragonwriter 10y ago
> The can of worms the precedent would set are shocking. Not really. > I would have a genuinely hard time proving my whereabouts 4 years ago, let alone 4 decades. Its a civil case, and the standard of proof on either side is just a "preponderance of the evidence" -- that is, better evidence than the other side has. Its not proof in any kind of absolute sense. And the judge, in ruling the case had to go to trial, seemed to think Doig had pretty strong proof, just not so indisputable as to make a trial unnecessary. There's a big gap between getting to trial and winning.
- rwallace 10y ago
  There's also a big question about whether winning is actually necessary in the typical case. Think about it: if this sets precedent, anyone with enough money who dislikes you for any reason can ruin you by filing a bogus lawsuit about something you putatively did a few decades ago. Sure, in theory you could eventually win based on preponderance of the evidence. In practice, unless you're a multimillionaire like Doig, the legal costs will bankrupt you before that. Still think it was okay for the judge to send this to trial?
  - girvo 10y ago
    What you've described can already happen, today, without any new precedent.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    The judge sending this to trial was following well established law; even if trial court decisions did set precedent, there would be nothing new for it to set: that anyone can file a lawsuit based on actions that are current enough to be within the relevant statute of limitations even if what is necessary to present a colorable legal claim is a disputed claim about facts in the distant past is not only settled law, it's hard to see how the legal system could function if it weren't the case. If it weren't, all you would need to prevent a perfectly valid case from being prosecuted is to identify a critical fact to the case that occurred far enough in the past and invent a bogus dispute over it.

cpncrunch 10y ago

>how is the greater good served by going forward with the case? Because the person who bought the painting is losing millions of dollars. I'm surprised this has gone to court. Surely there must be easier ways of resolving the identity of the artist who painted this.

matthewowen 10y ago
From the article, it sounds like there are. It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig. But the owner of this painting isn't happy with that, and wants to appeal to authorities. At some point, courts are the authority you reach.
- Nadya 10y ago
  >It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig. I noticed the extra "e" on the painting too. Either that is common for Peter to sign, he changed his name to drop the "e", or he forgot how to spell his own name when he was 17. Or someone forged his name as a signature onto the painting but didn't know how to spell "Doig" and didn't bother to look it up hoping they could pass the painting off for millions of dollars.
  - _quick_q 10y ago
    I'm confused by your comment. The article mentions an entirely different person (now deceased) with that name (Peter Doige) and his sister has supported the whereabouts (high school, prison, etc). Are you suggesting that the painting is (a) authentic Peter Doig, but he is lying about it, or (b) that it is a bad forgery?
    - Nadya 10y ago
      I'm suggesting it is the wrong person. With the suggestion that due to the amount of money involved there is motivation to pass off artwork as Doig's when it is not. People have a history of scamming for a personal profit. Throwing some artist's name on a painting when their paintings are worth millions, claiming they painted it decades ago, and trying to sell it for millions isn't too far-fetched of a scam. Maybe the artist doesn't remember 40 years ago and just says "Yeah, sure, whatever. I painted that 40 years ago." and you just made yourself $8,000,000 for paying someone down the street $80 for a painting.
      - _quick_q 10y ago
        Your original comment seems very much to suggest anything but that you believe it is the wrong person. That is the source of my confusion and I think possibly the others that replied.
  - jamie_ca 10y ago
    Also, the ID card for Mr Doige posted in the article is a few years off Mr Doig's birthdate on wikipedia...
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    The article has quite clearly proven there was a man named Peter Doige who was in that correctional institution at the correct time and who painted landscapes. It's just a different man from Peter Doig. It's not a "forgery" made after Peter Doig became famous, there was no purposeful deceit here; it's simply another painting from another person who happens to have a similar name. It's coincidence.
    - Nadya 10y ago
      >There was no purposeful deceit here; it's simply another painting from another person who happens to have a similar name. It's coincidence. I'm not sure why you so quickly cross that idea out when there are millions of dollars on the line. I'm sure if Doig's paintings were worthless this case wouldn't be seeing the light of day. There is a plausible reason for purposeful deceit in trying to pass Doige's painting off as Doig's painting so the owner could profit millions. If the painting was completely worthless I'd be inclined to believe that there isn't a chance in hell of purposeful deceit going on because there wouldn't be motivation to do so.
      - NamTaf 10y ago
        Except it was painted when Doig was 17, before he was famous and so at the time there was no reason to imitate some kid hundreds of kilometres away?
        Nadya 10y ago
        Do you honestly think the owner of the painting would be arguing it is Doig's painting and not Doige's painting if there was no money to be made from it and Doig (currently, in the modern day, not 40 years ago) was a noname artist who's paintings were worthless? Yes or no please.
    - mark-r 10y ago
      Not proven, merely provided evidence. They didn't actually search the records back far enough to prove there was a Peter Doige in the prison at the time in question. Nor do they have anything other than the sister's word that he painted landscapes. I must say that it's one of the most remarkable coincidences I've heard of.
- qbrass 10y ago
  My guess is he's building hype around the painting to try and drum the price up.
  - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
    Doig should paint a copy of Doige's work. Would go for millions from the publicity.
jules 10y ago
Did he buy the painting for millions? I don't see that in the article, but if so, then maybe that person should have asked him before buying.
- teh_klev 10y ago
  About a third of the way down the article it says: >The retired corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, 62, said he bought the painting for $100 from a man named Pete Doige (spelled with an e), whom he met in 1975 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In short, no.
an_ko 10y ago
The person who bought the painting is not losing millions of dollars, only failing to gain them. Unless of course the original price they paid for the painting was millions of dollars. I doubt that, given they bought it off of a 17-year-old fresh out of prison. By the time the case is over, they'll probably be in the negative. Pure sunk cost fallacy.
- intopieces 10y ago
  >Unless of course the original price they paid for the painting was millions of dollars. The retired corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, 62, said he bought the painting for $100 from a man named Pete Doige (spelled with an e), whom he met in 1975 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. But that's beside the point. If it's worth $Xm, it can be used as collateral for a loan. And it's probably also insured for a certain amount.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    It is up to the loan company then to ascertain if it is worth that much, let them sue the artist. > If it's worth $Xm, it can be used as collateral for a loan It is worth only that much if it is authentic. The "if" is pretty big it seems.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > The person who bought the painting is not losing millions of dollars, only failing to gain them. By the time the case is over, they'll probably be in the negative. Pure sunk cost fallacy This is an example of the endowment effect (fear of losing value that one perceives to already have), not sunk cost. Sunk cost would be if they continue the trial based on the amount of money they have already spent in fees, as opposed to the money they believe they can recoup later. (Even that isn't necessarily sunk cost, because legal fees can be covered by the losing party in egregious cases, though that's unlikely here).
- icebraining 10y ago
pavlov 10y ago
The art world is full of forgeries. Normally the artist is long dead, so the authenticity of a work is evaluated by experts. If a work is deemed fake, the owner will just have to swallow his losses. In this case, one would expect the artist himself to be the most credible expert... But apparently someone disagrees.
blakeyrat 10y ago
The person who bought the painting paid $100 for it in the 1970s. The only money he's "missing" is theoretical money that might exist if it turns out the painting is actually by Doig. Right now, there's no damages, and it's ridiculous that the judge accepted this case.
- pbartlow 10y ago
  How do you expect the painting to "turn out" to be by Peter Doig, if he is lying? What he would have us believe is that there was another young man with 90% the same name who painted a landscape that the senior Contemporary expert called "Wonderful early Peter Doig", and by coincidence they were both from Canada and it just happened to be the one year of his life when Doig was not in school or working. Oh, and the inmate had been busted for LSD. Doig has paintings named Blotter, Windowpane and Orange Sunshine.
AlexandrB 10y ago
> Because the person who bought the painting is losing millions of dollars. By that logic I should be suing the lottery because I lost millions of dollars when my numbers weren't picked.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
He bought it for $150. Not million, just dollars.

Zikes 10y ago

Assuming the plaintiff is somehow correct and it is a Peter Doig painting, this doesn't sound remotely fair to me: Some 16 year old kid paints something, figures it's worth $100 and sells it for that amount. 40 years later it's now worth ~25 million dollars. The original creator never promised that value to the buyer. On the very remote chance that Peter Doig loses the case, what could he realistically owe? The buyer still has exactly what they paid for, and nothing less. The buyer didn't buy the painting with the expectation that it would someday be worth millions. I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment.

Sanddancer 10y ago
That's not what this case is about. This is about who painted a work of art that could potentially be worth many millions of dollars. Peter Doig was living a pretty nomadic life at the time, and a lot of public records haven't been digitized due to time and cost. So at the moment, this is a he said/she said game, and a lawsuit like this is one of the only ways to be able to file the proper requests to search through the boxes and boxes of old records to get documentation one way or another as to who painted it.
- Retra 10y ago
  I don't see any reason why the court system should be used to resolve this kind of question. The value of a painting is entirely subjective, and if the person who painted it is used as a factor in the price, that is just a failing of the evaluator. If I priced a painting based on the weather in Guam in 1920, there shouldn't need to be a court ruling concerning attempts to figure out what the weather was like that year.
anjc 10y ago
> I can't go out and buy stock and sue the company if it doesn't give me a 250,000:1 return on investment But if you buy stock which explodes in value - even if you didn't expect its value to go up - you'd expect to be able to sell it at the market value as genuine stock, no?
icebraining 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> The can of worms the precedent would set are shocking. Not really. > I would have a genuinely hard time proving my whereabouts 4 years ago, let alone 4 decades. Its a civil case, and the standard of proof on either side is just a "preponderance of the evidence" -- that is, better evidence than the other side has. Its not proof in any kind of absolute sense. And the judge, in ruling the case had to go to trial, seemed to think Doig had pretty strong proof, just not so indisputable as to make a trial unnecessary. There's a big gap between getting to trial and winning.

rwallace 10y ago
There's also a big question about whether winning is actually necessary in the typical case. Think about it: if this sets precedent, anyone with enough money who dislikes you for any reason can ruin you by filing a bogus lawsuit about something you putatively did a few decades ago. Sure, in theory you could eventually win based on preponderance of the evidence. In practice, unless you're a multimillionaire like Doig, the legal costs will bankrupt you before that. Still think it was okay for the judge to send this to trial?
- girvo 10y ago
  What you've described can already happen, today, without any new precedent.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  The judge sending this to trial was following well established law; even if trial court decisions did set precedent, there would be nothing new for it to set: that anyone can file a lawsuit based on actions that are current enough to be within the relevant statute of limitations even if what is necessary to present a colorable legal claim is a disputed claim about facts in the distant past is not only settled law, it's hard to see how the legal system could function if it weren't the case. If it weren't, all you would need to prevent a perfectly valid case from being prosecuted is to identify a critical fact to the case that occurred far enough in the past and invent a bogus dispute over it.