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Friday, October 09, 2009

Courts - More on: The Jury is In: "Brooke Astor’s Son Guilty in Scheme to Defraud Her "

More on Brooke Astor:

"Tough and Relentless, Prosecutor Pulled No Punches During Astor Trial," Daniel Wise in the New York Law Journal - here

"Despite Verdict, Fate of Astor Fortune Is Uncertain ," A.G. Sulzberger in the NY Times - some quotes from the story:

Yet the conviction of Mrs. Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall, on charges that he stole from her has done little to resolve the uncertain fate of the $180 million estate at the heart of the discord. So even as Mr. Marshall awaits sentencing and a possible appeal, another legal showdown looms.

As the public watched the criminal trial unfold over the last five months, a small army of lawyers, including those for a dozen charities, read the tea leaves for some sense of how they could alter the jockeying over the Astor fortune. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library, the two main beneficiaries of Mrs. Astor’s largess, even sent observers to the trial.

The expected contest — which could be sidestepped by a settlement — is in Westchester County Surrogate’s Court, and centers on whether Mrs. Astor’s assets should be distributed according to her most recent will, from 2002, or an earlier version, which directed more money to charity.

At the core of this issue is whether Mrs. Astor was mentally competent when she signed the 2002 will, which was amended in late 2003 and again in early 2004. Those revisions gave her son more control over her estate and, in the process, reduced the amount of money she left to the New York universities, libraries, parks and museums she spent so much of her life supporting.

The sweeping verdict against Mr. Marshall may provide a significant boost to their push to have the recent will thrown out as invalid, lawyers say. “It’s very unusual and directly relevant to the issues before the surrogate because both cases concern her mental capacity,” said Paul C. Saunders, a lawyer for Annette de la Renta, who was Mrs. Astor’s court-appointed guardian and is a party in the Surrogate’s Court case. “Clearly the jury believes she didn’t have the capacity to understand what she was doing.”

The maneuvering began almost immediately after Mrs. Astor’s death on Aug. 13, 2007, with a dispute over who should be named administrators of the estate (the court eventually named JPMorgan Chase & Company and a retired judge). The case began to move quickly toward a will battle, though no formal objection has yet been filed.

If the most recent will is upheld, many charities will lose millions of dollars, with the Met and the library — both of which declined to comment — losing out on an estimated $10 million each. The Surrogate’s Court case was postponed pending the resolution of the criminal case, and it remained unclear whether it would resume if Mr. Marshall appealed his conviction. The court is scheduled to discuss the civil case again on Nov. 4.

Because there is little precedent for criminal charges to be brought in a will dispute, legal experts said it was difficult to predict how the testimony gathered during 19 weeks in court or the criminal convictions of Mr. Marshall and Francis X. Morrissey Jr., a lawyer who did estate work for Mrs. Astor, would affect the outcome. However, the standard of proof in criminal court (beyond a reasonable doubt) is higher than in civil court (a preponderance of the evidence), so a criminal conviction would appear to be unfavorable for Mr. Marshall.

The jury found that Mr. Marshall had conspired to defraud his mother by tricking her into altering her will twice and that her signature on one of those codicils was forged by Mr. Morrissey. While the criminal case did not include charges regarding the 2002 will or the first amendment, guilty verdicts on other charges not directly related to the will changes suggest that the jury believed that questions about Mrs. Astor’s competency predated them.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 9, 2009 03:01 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts