Whether the nonstatutory defense of laches may bar an action to recover artwork lost because of Nazi persecution, where that action has been brought within the statute of limitations prescribed by Congress in the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The Actor, a masterwork by Pablo Picasso currently held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, once belonged to Paul and Alice Leffmann, German Jews who fled from Germany to Italy in 1937 to escape the Nazis. Paul was forced to sell the painting in 1938 for a price far below its actual value to finance his and Alice’s safe passage out of Nazi-allied Italy, which had adopted and implemented the Nazi pattern of rampant anti-Semitic policies and outright physical persecution of Jews. Laurel Zuckerman, the Leffmanns’ great-grandniece, in her role as ancillary administratrix of the estate of Alice Leffmann, sought to recover The Actor. The District Court dismissed the action. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal on a ground not reached by the District Court: it found laches, even though the action was brought within the time required by Section 5 of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, Pub. L. No. 114-308. The questions presented are: 1. Whether the nonstatutory defense of laches may bar an action to recover artwork lost because of Nazi persecution, where that action has been brought within the statute of limitations prescribed by Congress in the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016? 2. Whether an action may be dismissed for laches at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage without discovery or exploration of factual disputes about the laches defense?