Cases & Developments

Memorandum Opinion & Order granting Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff is the niece of Father Gilbert V. Hartke, a priest of the Dominican order who taught drama at the Catholic University of America until he died intestate in 1986. She, in her individual capacity and on behalf of Father Hartke’s estate, sued the University and its auctioneers, asserting rights to a “blue pinafore dress with a white blouse, which had been worn by Judy Garland when she appeared as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz film” that had been given to Father Hartke and that was “discovered” in 2021 “in a storage location” on the University’s campus among other items that had belonged to him. In granting dismissal for lack of standing, the court held that plaintiff did not plead facts sufficient to show that she was the real party in interest, noting that Father Hartke had taken a vow of poverty at his ordination in 1933 whereby he renounced his salary and temporal goods in favor of the Dominican order, that the only item listed in the inventory of his estate during probate proceedings was the right to publicize his name, and that plaintiff had shown no basis for her now to assert a claim on behalf of the estate.