FREDERICTON, Canada—An appeal begins Monday to reexamine whether Lord Beaverbrook's heirs or New Brunswick's Beaverbrook Art Gallery are entitled to the lord's art collection, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, reports the Globe and Mail. An earlier decision awarded most of the works to the gallery, which insisted the collection was a gift from the lord. Beaverbrook's heirs, on the other hand, claim the collection was simply on loan to the gallery and belongs to the family.

In the 2006–07 decision, 85 out of 133 works were awarded to the gallery, including two of the most valuable works — paintings by Lucian Freud and William Turner. Lawyers for the Beaverbrook U.K. Foundation, a charity established by Max Aitken, the first Lord Beaverbrook, have accused retired Supreme Court Justice Peter Cory, who presided over the original hearing, of being biased and not judging the case fairly. Among their reasons is Cory's comparison between Lord Beaverbrook and Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. "There is no justification for calling New Brunswick's and the gallery's greatest benefactor a 'con artist' who committed a 'gargantuan fraud' and was comparable to Goebbles," the foundation stated.