"The Doctrine of Laches" Novelized
Here’s an interesting scenario probably more suited to legal experts than to my musings in this blog as a writer of fiction and visual arts dilettante. Let’s say a couple of paintings are stolen from an art museum but, before police are notified, the museum curator or director or chief trustee or whatever decides to keep the theft to herself and maybe a small circle of confidants. The curator might do this because, for example, she overpaid for an acquisition, and the excess funding for the piece of art came from security funding. The lacking security funds would have directly prevented the theft of the two valuable canvasses.
The curator, having just signed the mortgage on a large house near The Plaza and in the midst of sorting through a pile of invitations to lavish fêtes at the exquisite mansions of donors, is naturally loath to admit her error in purchasing beyond the museum’s budget because of which a theft that could have been prevented wasn’t. Besides, maybe she has a pretty good idea of who the thief is, or, at least, a notion of how to find the thief by chatting with her many sources among the art cognoscenti.
The curator is intelligent, after all. She has seen a bit of the underbelly of the art world and can probably cast out feelers for the two missing pieces. So she tugs the sleeve of a few patrons to chat privately in the billiards room; she meets a few old colleagues for coffee; she plies lone trustees with martinis at The Twain—all to advance her investigation into the missing paintings. Meanwhile, she fills the two spaces on the museum wall with works fresh out of the Conservation Department to overhyped fanfare. Those other two paintings, she claims, will not be on display for a while. They needed a touch-up.
Three years go by, and, due to a slip up on the thief’s part, the curator accuses a known patron as the thief. She notifies the authorities, who find the paintings in the patron’s house after a quick search. Gathered together in an interrogation room down at the station, the curator snarls, “I knew it was you all along. From the very first day, I knew you were the thief.” The thief smiles and nods to his attorney, who states (in a French accent), “Then, madame curator, why did you not alert the authorities? Eh? You have known my client was ze thief for all these three years but did nothing to retrieve the artworks.”
“I knew it was him, the bastard, but…”
“And in those three years, my client has devoted his entire life and fortune to the establishment of The Orphans Museum, and the entire board of trustees at your museum has either died or moved all over the world? Yes?”
“Yes, but…”
“Ah madame, but you have slept on your rights. My Gallic forefazers would call this laschesse, meaning ‘remissness.’ Vigilantibus non dormientibus æquitas subvenit, my dear madam, or, as you say eet, ‘Equity aids the vigilant, not the sleepers.’ Come, client, let us go admire your two paintings over a glass of grand cru.”
Ok, this might not be a perfect example of the Doctrine of Laches, but in my novel Art Appreciation, I take that idea and run with it.
Another example of this defense would be a resident who watches his neighbor build a garage extension and then, two years later, when the neighbor is no longer a friend, complains to the authorities that the garage extension reaches over into his property. The neighbor could use the defense of laches.
Again, I’m sure the legal community could tear my fictitious art museum example apart, but I had a great time writing Art Appreciation, and I acknowledge I played a little loose with the doctrine of laches.
