First Circuit Rules on Contract & Bailment Disputes Regarding Liberace's Piano

At issue is a piano, once owned by Liberace (right with actor Maureen O'Hara).  The First Circuit's opinion is mostly concerned with law stuff, on which more below. Thomas F. Harrison provides the factual summary in the Courthouse News.  

According to the reporting, Baldwin pianos (Baldwin), owned since 2001 by the Gibson Foundation, Inc. (Gibson), asked Rob Norris to remove a piano made for Liberace from a Manhattan ballroom undergoing renovation. The piano was encrusted with 10,000 rhinestones. When Baldwin requested that the piano be returned in 2015, Mr. Norris refused, claiming that the piano was a gift given in the expectation that Mr. Norris and his Rockland, Mass. business, The Piano Mill, would use the piano for promotional purposes.

Apparently, Gibson, which may have lost track of the piano, suddenly grew interested when Mr. Norris gave an interview in which he estimated the value of the piano at $500,000. His attorney now says that his client was "puffing" as Liberace himself was wont to do. 

The First Circuit opinion in Gibson Foundation, Inc. v. Norris focuses not so much on the colorful characters involved but, alas, on statutes of limitations.  Gibson alleged either a breach of a bailment, or a breach of a warehousing agreement. The District Court had granted Norris summary judgment, finding that the three-year statute of limitations had run on Gibson's bailment claim and that it had not provided sufficient evidence to support a jury finding that a contract existed between the parties. 

For the purposes of the appeal from summary judgment, the court assumed that a bailment agreement existed, but the statute of limitations for bailments under Massachusetts law turned out to be a very tricky issue. Under Massachusetts law, it seems that the statute of limitations for a breach-of-bailment claim is either three years, if the gist of the claim sounds in tort, or six years, if the gist of the claim sounds in contract. Here, the First Circuit concluded, a reasonable jury could conclude that the gist of the claim derived from a breach of a mutually beneficial arrangement and thus that six-year statute of limitations could apply.  Norris gave consideration by storing the piano; in exchange, The Piano Mill was allowed to use the piano for promotional purposes.  Accordingly, the First Circuit reversed the District Court's grant of summary judgment on Gibson's bailment claim. It was not, as a matter of law, time-barred.

Norris argued in the alternative that Gibson could not establish a bailment because it could not establish that it owned the piano. Gibson Brands, the Gibson entity that claimed to own the piano, had filed for bankruptcy in 2018. In that proceeding it had to list its assets, and it omitted the piano. No matter, said the First Circuit. At least for the purposes of summary judgment, Gibson established a prima facie case for ownership simply because it had possession of the piano prior to handing it over to Mr. Norris.

Given its findings in connection with the breach-of-bailment claim, it comes as no surprise that the First Circuit also reversed the District Court's grant of summary judgment to Mr. Norris on Gibson's breach-of-contract claim. However, it affirmed the District Court's denial of summary judgment to Gibson on both of its claims.  The case was remanded and proceeded to trial. In July, as Brian Dowling reports on Law360 here, the jury handed a victory to Gibson.

If you are not a Boomer or Gen-X, you may be wondering who this Liberace fellow was.  You can't go amiss with a Google search, but make sure you watch a video.  Liberace was always on, and so whatever you find will be a faithful representation of his public persona.  Here's a taste: