Brady, et al. v. Citizens Union Savings Bank, et al. (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-152-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us 14-P-1641 Appeals Court W. NANCY BRADY, executrix,[1] & another[2] vs. CITIZENS UNION SAVINGS BANK[3] & another.[4] No. 14-P-1641. Bristol. June 1, 2015. – September 30, 2015. Present: Sullivan, Maldonado, & Massing, JJ. Probate Court, Attorney’s fees, Trust. Trust, Attorney’s fees. Practice, Civil, Attorney’s fees. Executor and Administrator, Attorney’s fees. Complaint in equity filed in the Bristol Division of the Probate and Family Court Department on July 13, 2011. The case was heard by Virginia M. Ward, J. Philip J. Laffey for Dale Eggers. Edwin F. Landers, Jr., for W. Nancy Brady. Ben Nathan Dunlap for Edwin J. Haznar, Jr. MASSING, J. Defendant Dale Eggers, a beneficiary of the William O. Smith Trust (the trust), appeals from a decree issued by a judge of the Probate and Family Court awarding attorney’s fees, costs, and compensation for professional services to be paid to the plaintiffs from trust funds. The plaintiffs’ petition to the court claimed that their decedents (the trustees) had rendered legal and accounting services to the trust and had incurred expenses in their defense of a lawsuit that Eggers initiated against them in connection with their duties as trustees. The amount of the award was nearly sixty percent of the value of the trust at the time of the petition. While we do not reach the question of the reasonableness of the award, we remand the case for the judge to “undertake a more specific and searching analysis of the actual requests for fees and costs submitted than the record suggests took place.” Matter of the Estate of King, 455 Mass. 796, 809 (2010) (King). Background. Eggers’s father, Wilson O. Smith, established the trust in 1987. Among the beneficiaries were Smith’s wife, Betty Georgas (who was not Eggers’s mother), Eggers, and Eggers’s children. In December, 2006, Eggers and one of her daughters initiated a lawsuit in the Probate and Family Court against the trustees, Thomas T. Brady and Edwin J. Haznar, alleging breach of fiduciary duty in their 1994 conveyance of a Florida property out of the trust to Georgas (the prior action). After nearly four years of litigation, on November 8, 2010, summary judgment entered in favor of the trustees. Among the grounds for judgment was that the prior action was barred by the statute of limitations because Eggers […]