Last Friday, December 13, 20204, Jackson County (Missouri) Circuit Court Judge Mark Styles, Jr. delivered his opinion in the case of Jessie Benton, et al v. UMB Bank, N.A., soundly rejecting plaintiffs’ claims that the bank failed in executing its fiduciary duties as executor and trustee of the trust established in 1975 by famed artist Thomas Hart Benton and his wife, Rita.
The case had attracted considerable press attention (https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-02-10/umb-bank-says-in-court-thomas-hart-bentons-descendants-fabricated-claims-of-estate-mismanagement), both because of Benton’s reputation as an iconic and influential American Regionalist painter and muralist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hart_Benton_(painter)) but also because of the sterling reputation and deep ties to the Kansas City community of both the bank, founded in 1913 (https://ingrams.com/article/a-history-we-can-still-bank-on/), and the family of its founder, William T. Kemper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thornton_Kemper_Sr.), descendants of whom run the bank to this day. The plaintiffs, Benton’s daughter Jessie and her three children, sought damages in excess of $85,000,000 for what they alleged was a history of inadequate care and management of thousands of pieces of Benton art, and self-dealing with respect thereto. The judge disagreed, awarding plaintiffs only $35,000 related to five pieces of art (not paintings but likely sketches or studies) that the bank acknowledged were not accounted for at the end of its decades-long trust administration.
The court’s full opinion is attached below,
and a Kansas City Star article on the case can be accessed here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article297231944.html.
I am proud to have played a small part in this extraordinary result.
My involvement in this case consisted of having been engaged by the law firm of Shook Hardy & Bacon, counsel for UMB Bank, to provide exert testimony on the topic of custom and practice in the corporate fiduciary industry. I prepared an 80+ page expert report and testified in deposition and at trial. As an expert witness, my role was to provide independent, objective opinions based upon the record and my training and experience; I was not to be, and was not, an advocate for either side in the dispute. As always, I had no interest, financial or otherwise, in the ultimate resolution of the dispute. It has been my experience that most cases of fiduciary litigation are settled and thus do not make it to trial resulting in an opinion; as a result, the expert rarely knows whether or to what extent his or her opinions may have had some influence on the outcome. In this instance, I was more fortunate.
In its opinion, the Court rejected all of plaintiffs’ claims regarding art inventorying, appraisals, sales, exhibits, copyrights, licensing, investments and portfolio management. The judge discussed how customs and practices in the corporate fiduciary industry evolved over time; how plaintiffs established no damages related to the challenged transactions (which, in fact, benefitted the trust); and how key facts – including that the Benton Trust assets were mostly comprised of artwork and that the beneficiaries had significant real estate needs – supported the bank’s investment strategy and portfolio composition.
Significantly, the Court rejected the argument, propounded by Professor Robert Sitkoff of Harvard Law School, that the “No Further Inquiry Rule” should be applied in this case (“[U]nder the theory of th[e] rule, if a trustee engages in a transaction that involves or is affected by a conflict of interest, no further inquiry is made. … [G]ood faith and the fairness of the transaction are irrelevant and [] no determination needs to be made as to the impact of the trustee’s decision.”)(Opinion ¶¶ 296-304), while dismissing plaintiffs’ allegations that UMB Bank engaged in various purportedly conflicted transactions, including with respect to two of Benton’s most famous paintings – Self Portrait with Rita (Opinion ¶¶ 167-178) and Persephone (Opinion ¶¶ 179-189).
The case by the numbers:
$85,000,00++ Damages sought by plaintiffs
$35,000 Total damages awarded plaintiffs
5 years Length of case from filing to decision
74 days Length of bench trial (nonconsecutive)
40+ years UMB’s tenure as executor/trustee of the Benton Trust
14,182 pages Length of full trial transcript
87 pages Length of FitzPatrick expert report
3,700 Exhibits presented at trial
67 Number of witnesses at trial
15,000 Number of filings contained in the court records
3,500 Works of Benton art distributed to the Benton estate and trust
5 Works of art (likely sketches or studies) unaccounted for
It is rare that an expert witness gets to participate in a case all the way through to an opinion.
Rarer still is the chance to be exposed to, and to learn to appreciate, the work of genius in a field outside one’s own. I found that genius in the work of Thomas Hart Benton (https://www.thomashartbenton.com).
I am truly grateful for both experiences.
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