CALIFORNIA MORTGAGE LENDER SETTLES $4.1 MILLION SUIT OVER ADAMS PRINTS

The art lovers at a once high-flying subprime mortgage lender now under bankruptcy protection and California’s insurance regulator have settled their fight over collection of Ansel Adams prints, reports Patrick Fitzgerald for the Wall Street Journal. Fremont General Corporation has agreed to let the California Department of Insurance keep $4.1 million from the sale of Ansel Adams prints sold at Christie’s auction house last year in the months before the company filed for bankruptcy protection. At issue was a collection of Adams prints––among the largest in private hands, according to Christie’s––that included 121 silver-gelatin Adams prints. The insurance commissioner of California sued Fremont, claiming the prints actually belonged to Fremont Indemnity, a shuttered insurance company formerly controlled by the mortgage lender. The Department of Insurance, which took over the insolvent insurer in 2003, claimed Fremont executives transferred the artwork from the insurance unit to Fremont General without paying for it.

Fremont Indemnity acquired the Adams prints between 1969 and 1975, when the famed photographer and company vice president David McIntyre worked together on a project to decorate Fremont’s offices. Under the deal, Fremont General will keep about three hundred thousand dollars from the auction and the unsold artwork, which is estimated to have a value of as much as two million dollars. The agreement is part of a larger deal between Fremont and the insurance commissioner that settles nearly five hundred million dollars in claims filed by the regulator. Fremont General, based in Brea, filed for bankruptcy protection in June of last year in order to sell its banking unit after running afoul of regulatory authorities.