Which actually should never have mattered, because the trial never should have happened. Doig said, no, that is not my painting. That should have been the end of it, but the other party didn't like that and tried to get the court to say otherwise because they thought they had basically won the lottery.
This case seems odd based on the news coverage though (based on the coverage in respectable publications like The New York Times and Guardian). I would have, perhaps naively, assumed that the plaintiffs would have been expected to have at least some evidence that Doig (with a different spelling) was the artist in question before it went to trial. Which doesn't seem to have been the case.
Of course, this was a civil suit and the reality is that you can sue anyone for just about any reason. For better or worse.
If this concerns you, you should not be as dependent on items whose value hangs so tightly on the word of a disinterested (or worse, interested) party.
Disagree. While the linked case is indeed ridiculous, I can imagine a scenario where an artist might deny creating a work to harm the work's owner. That's something that clearly falls under tort law and a simple denial shouldn't provide immunity.
If you're mean, there are many ways to make individuals miserable through fringe use of the civil courts. All of it perfectly legal.
My instinct is that a lie doesn't need to be told to create harm in a case like this where significant value depends on whether an important person created the work. Might search for some legal blogs to see if this has been analyzed further.
In this case, I think the alleged reason he was required to do so was because he had previously denied authorship, and that doing so was a false statement that harmed the owner of the painting which the acknowledgement of authorship was necessary to undue the harm.
This could happen to anyone who creates things.
Their arguments were so detached from reality they may as well have been trying to prove that Elvis made the painting.