Jonathan Freiman

Partner, Wiggin and Dana

Adjunct Faculty

Jonathan Freiman is a partner at Wiggin and Dana, where he chairs the Appellate Practice Group and co-chairs the Art and Museum Law Practice Group. Freiman represents clients in complex and high-stakes disputes, including appeals, transnational litigation, and disputes over art and artifacts. His art law matters have included the successful defense of a client’s title to one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, a U.S. Supreme Court victory for Germany and the Berlin equivalent of the Smithsonian in a case alleging that a major collection of medieval art was obtained through duress in the Nazi era, and the representation of Yale University in litigation with Peru over Incan artifacts from Machu Picchu. Freiman’s appellate work includes defeating a Nobel Prize winner in litigation over the ownership of the patent on the Nobel-winning technology, as well as reversals in major commercial matters in the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Courts of California, Georgia, and Connecticut. In Connecticut alone, in one appeal Freiman reversed what was then the largest class-action or commercial judgment ever issued in the state, and in another appeal he preserved what was then the largest judgment of any sort ever affirmed by the Connecticut Appellate Court.

He has taught Art and Artifacts Law at Yale Law School as well as co-founding and teaching a clinical program there litigating cases at the intersection of national security and civil liberties. The Chambers High Net Worth guide names him one of the leading Art and Cultural Property Law lawyers in the United States, and the U.S. Copyright Office has cited him in a report to Congress on copyright in the visual arts.