15 Nov Yoko Ono Wins Legal Battle Over John Lennon’s Stolen Patek Philippe
Source Credit: Content and images from Artnet News. Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/john-lennon-stolen-patek-phillippe-belongs-yoko-ono-swiss-court-rules-2570488
A watch that Yoko Ono gifted to John Lennon, later stolen after his death, rightfully belongs to his widow and not a collector who bought it from an auction house decades later, Switzerland’s highest court has ruled.
Ono bought the Patek Phillippe watch from Tiffany for around $25,000 and gave it to her rockstar husband as a 40th birthday present on October 9, 1980. On the back, she had engraved the text “(Just Like) Starting Over Love Yoko 10-9-1980 N.Y.C.”
The timepiece, which was described as the “El Dorado of lost watches” in a profile by The New Yorker documenting its storied history, appears to be the only wristwatch the Beatle owned and is estimated to now be worth some $4.5 million. Lennon, famously, was photographed by Bob Gruen wearing the watch at the Hit Factory recording studio—an image that would spark discussions about its whereabouts in the early 2000s among online horological circles.
John Lennon’s Patek Philippe. Photo: Auctionata.
After his murder that December, the watch was kept in a locked room of the couple’s apartment in the Dakota building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was allegedly stolen in 2005 by Ono’s chauffeur, and later discovered to have changed hands several times before an Italian collector bought it from a German auction house in 2014.
Ono was purportedly unaware that the watch was missing until the unnamed collector submitted the watch for an appraisal at another auction house in Geneva. Ultimately, the collector filed a lawsuit to legally establish ownership of the watch in 2018.
“I’m more of a Rolling Stones man,” the collector said in an email reply to The New Yorker ahead of the recent ruling by Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court, noting that he remained hopeful he could wear the watch as soon as possible.
But the high court ultimately sided with two lower courts that previously determined that the watch belonged to Ono, definitely ending the legal saga and paving the way for its return to its original owner.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon, 1968. Photo: Susan Wood / Getty Images.
“It is undisputed that ownership of the watch passed to Yoko Ono by inheritance after John Lennon’s death,” the Federal Supreme Court said in a statement. “Secondly, [a lower court] was allowed to assume without arbitrariness that the watch was stolen by the former chauffeur and, conversely, that there was nothing to suggest Yoko Ono would have wanted to give the chauffeur this unique piece.”
Currently, the watch is being kept at an undisclosed location in Geneva.
“It’s important that we get it back because of all we’ve gone through over it,” said Sean Lennon, the son of Ono and Lennon. “I’m not a watch guy. I’d be terrified to wear anything of my dad’s. I never even played one of his guitars. To me, if anything, the watch is just a symbol of how dangerous it is to trust.”
Source Credit: Content and images from Artnet News. Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/john-lennon-stolen-patek-phillippe-belongs-yoko-ono-swiss-court-rules-2570488