Top attorney supports claim for art seized during WWII

LOS ANGELES - California's attorney general filed a brief with the US Supreme Court on Wednesday in support of a Connecticut woman who wants a Pasadena museum to return two 500-year-old paintings seized by Nazis during World War II.

Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the court to consider an appeal by Marei von Saher of Greenwich, Conn., who sued the Norton Simon Museum for the paintings in 2007.

The pair of 16th-century wood panels by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder was seized from von Saher's relative, owned for a time by Nazi leader Hermann Goering and purchased 40 years ago by the museum. In 2007, the paintings were valued at $24 million.