## Facts

- Peggy Guggenheim donated her Venice, Italy mansion (the palazzo used as a museum) and its modern art collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (the Foundation), a New York–based entity.
- The donation included stipulations that the palazzo’s interior arrangements would remain as Guggenheim left them (and that the collection would be maintained and displayed consistently with those wishes).
- Guggenheim’s descendants—David Hélion, Nicolas Hélion, and Sandro Rumney (the Consorts Hélion‑Rumney)—believed the Foundation had not respected those stipulations in operating the Venice museum.
- The descendants, who lived in France, brought suit in Paris seeking relief based on the alleged nonperformance of obligations arising from the donation and related undertakings.
- The Foundation contested the jurisdiction of the French courts, invoking the 1968 Brussels Convention and arguing the dispute belonged in Italy, where the palazzo and collection were located and where it claimed to have a “secondary seat” (or comparable presence).
- A Paris court at first instance accepted jurisdiction. The Foundation appealed to the Paris Court of Appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether, under the 1968 Brussels Convention, the Foundation could be treated as domiciled (or sufficiently established) in Italy so that the action had to be brought there rather than in France.
2. Whether the action was properly classified as one concerning rights in rem in immovable property (triggering exclusive jurisdiction at the situs) or as an action to enforce obligations arising from the donation conditions.
3. If the Convention did not compel litigation in Italy, whether French courts could retain jurisdiction over the heirs’ claims notwithstanding the Venetian location of the museum property and collection.

## Decision

- The Paris Court of Appeal upheld the first‑instance ruling that French courts had jurisdiction to hear the descendants’ action against the Foundation.
- The court declined to treat the dispute as an in‑rem immovable‑property action requiring exclusive jurisdiction in Italy.
- The court treated the claims as centered on enforceable obligations connected to the donation conditions and the Foundation’s commitments, which did not mandate exclusive situs-based jurisdiction.

## Legal Principles

- The Brussels Convention’s exclusive-jurisdiction rule for rights in rem in immovable property is reserved for actions whose subject matter is a real right in land (such as ownership or similar property rights), not disputes focused on compliance with obligations tied to a donation.
- A defendant’s operational presence in a Member State (including an asserted “secondary seat”) does not automatically reclassify a dispute as one subject to exclusive jurisdiction at the location of the immovable property.
- Claims seeking enforcement of stipulations attached to a donation may be analyzed as obligation-based (contract-type) claims for jurisdictional purposes, even when performance relates to a building and collection located abroad.

## Conclusion

The Paris Court of Appeal held that the heirs’ Paris action against the Guggenheim Foundation could proceed in France because the dispute was framed as enforcement of obligations arising from the donation’s conditions rather than a claim asserting rights in rem in the Venetian property, and the Brussels Convention did not require exclusive jurisdiction in Italy on the facts presented.


Fondation Solomon R. Guggenheim v. Consorts Helion-Rumney, CA (1st Ch.), 17 November 1993, 83 Rev. cr. D.P. II 115 (1994)