FIDUCIARY & INSURANCE LITIGATION
Fred represents business owners, trustees and beneficiaries who require a wide range of fiduciary and insurance related legal actions.
EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS:
- Tried and obtained resolution for corporate trustee resolving disputes among more than thirty beneficiaries, in order to terminate trust and distribute its assets, while vindicating trustee of alleged statutory and common law violations.
- Obtained a jury verdict in favor of a multinational, life insurance company regarding correct payment of death benefits and defeating claim that the owner had changed his beneficiary configuration.
- Successfully tried to a jury competing claims for multi-state Fortune 500 insurance company relating to billing for various classes of patients, defeating a $30 million counterclaim and obtaining verdict in favor of insurer on payment obligations.
- Successfully defeated claim against trustee of family trust for breach of fiduciary duty by establishing that complaining beneficiary had full knowledge of the administration and trust activities of the various assets of the deceased’s “estate,” including various trusts, and demonstrating that formal accounting was not required due to waiver by disgruntled beneficiary. The case was upheld on appeal and a final order was entered against the rouge beneficiary such that the final order became law of the case.
- Successfully prevailed in multiple institutional trustee litigation involving issues from instructions on trust interpretation (petitions for instructions), equitable reformation of trust documents, including those that were when suit was filed roughly a century old, to application of law to the date of existing testamentary documents (decades old), to removal of trustees and adjustments to trusts with outdated trust language that required an upgrade to keep pace with current institutional trends and procedures.
- Obtained several reformation and/or equitable deviation judgments in litigation ranging from adjustment to distribution language of trust, affecting trust terms and provisions involving diversification issues, to determining proper beneficiaries, including as to testamentary documents that are at least a century old and/or trust language that is substantially ambiguous.
