Valentine, the former president of the UPN network and a trustee at the Hammer Museum, was an early collector of Grotjahn's slivery abstract paintings, but now the two are no longer on speaking terms. According to the artist, Valentine is the only collector he has asked who has refused to pay the resale royalty fee. "I think Dean's made $3 million off of buying and selling my work, so this is a really lame thing to do," Grotjahn told the LAT.

Though Valentine refused to disclose how much he has made off of flipping Grotjahn's work, what is known is that he purchased early paintings by the artist for less than $10,000. In 2008, an oil painting from 2005 brought to auction by the collector sold at Phillips de Pury and Co. for $1.2 million.   

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 The five percent fee dates back to the 1976 Resale Royalties Act, a law that mandates that visual artists, like musicians or actors, receive a royalty when their work is resold in California or by a California resident. Similar laws, called droit de suite, exist in Europe, but have been defeated in New York.

Valentine, for his part, told the LAT he believes the law is "poorly written and discriminatory": "As a California resident I don't believe I should be disadvantaged in collecting or reselling art... I'm a big believer that there should be some kind of national royalty here, like in France, but I don't see any reason why I should have to pay in a situation when other collectors do not."

Earlier this year Valentine's lawyers moved the case to federal court by arguing the law interferes with the Copyright Act of 1976 — the same argument Christie's and Sotheby's are expected to use if the class action suits against them go forward — but a U.S. district court judge sent the case back to state court.

"This law is not enforced," Grotjahn noted. "To collect your money, you have to get a lawyer. It's a pain in the neck and it's expensive. Most artists don't have the money to do this."

Grotjahn's suit also draws attention to the fact that auction houses are not the only institutions that can be held liable for failure to comply with the resale law. "Everybody in theory is susceptible to the fee," dealer Tim Nye, who specializes in work by California artists from the '60s and '70s, told ARTINFO following news of the class action suit against Christie's and Sotheby's last week. "I haven't always had the artists enforce it, but I always ask them if they expect the fee."

It remains to be seen whether secondary galleries are the next art-world population to have to answer to the resale royalty act. "I think the law was really enacted to — and this may apply to artists like Chuck Close — when there is a massive profit from a long period of time and the reseller stands to make a huge profit," Nye said. "I don't think the law was intended... for dealers like myself who are making offers at super thin margins."