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business litigation
trust and estate litigation
Defending a corporate trustee against claims it breached its fiduciary duty
Our attorneys represented an institutional trust company
that served for a number of years as co-trustee with the widow of the
grantor of the trust. The trust portfolio was heavily concentrated in the
stock of the company at which the grantor had been employed. Upon the
widow's death, the trust was to terminate and the assets were to be
distributed to the grantor's children.
During the last years of the widow's life, the company's
stock value decreased dramatically. After the widow's death, the children
sued the corporate trustee for breach of fiduciary duty in failing to
diversify the trust account. They sought more than $3 million in actual
and punitive damages.
Following a week-long trial in the Circuit Court for the
City of St. Louis, the Court rendered a judgment finding that our client
had not breached its fiduciary duty. We successfully defended the trial
court's judgment in the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern
District, which later affirmed the judgment of the trial court in its
entirety.
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