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Home / Hollywood and TV / Ryan O'Neal took a Warhol portrait from Farrah Fawcett's home; her university sued and lost
Case file s427 · Hollywood and TV · 2009
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2009
Farrah Fawcett: Farrah Fawcett 1977
Farrah Fawcett. ABC Television. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
June 2009
Place
Santa Monica, California · United States
Field
Television and film actor · Film and television on the timeline
Legal tradition
California trust law · Common law
Historical event
Board of Regents of the University of Texas System v. O'Neal, Los Angeles County Superior Court, 2013
Religion
Farrah Fawcett: Catholic (recorded as 20th-century Roman Catholics, 21st-century Roman Catholics, American Roman Catholics on Wikipedia)
Hollywood and TVNowNorth AmericaUnited States

Ryan O'Neal took a Warhol portrait from Farrah Fawcett's home; her university sued and lost

Farrah Fawcett studied art at the University of Texas from 1965 to 1968. Andy Warhol made two portraits of her in 1980. In 2007 she amended her living trust to leave all her "artwork and art objects" to the university. The trust left $100,000 to Greg Lott, her college boyfriend, and nothing to Ryan O'Neal, her partner since 1979 and father of her son Redmond. After she died of cancer in June 2009 at 62, O'Neal took one Warhol from her home and said she had given it to him. The trustee wrote to the university; when the art arrived, one Warhol was missing. The university sued in 2011. Each painting was estimated at up to $12 million. At trial in late 2013, the university's lawyer said Fawcett took the painting from O'Neal's house after finding him with another woman in 1997. Lott said in a deposition that he and Fawcett had been a couple since 1998; O'Neal's lawyer called him a convicted felon. Lott testified he had two drug convictions. After four days of deliberation, the jury ruled for O'Neal in December 2013. The other Warhol hangs at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. O'Neal died in December 2023 at 82.

What the law took from it

Valuable art left in a trust should be inventoried and moved out of the house before anyone else can take it.

Sources
  1. texasmonthly.comPress
  2. abcnews.go.comPress
  3. VarietyPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Ryan O'Neal took a Warhol portrait from Farrah Fawcett's home; her university sued and lost,” story s427, https://www.celebrity.estate/farrah-fawcett-2009, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Hollywood and TVNowNorth AmericaCommon lawUnited States