Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02207/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02207-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 370
Nature of Suit: Other Fraud
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted November 6, 2015*

Decided November 6, 2015 

Before 

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge 

JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge 

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

No. 15-2207 

ROBERT H. SARVIS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

BMO HARRIS BANK N.A., et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 14 C 09143 

Edmond E. Chang, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

 Robert Sarvis appeals from the dismissal of his lawsuit claiming that 

BMO Harris Bank and several of his relatives mismanaged trusts that were intended to 

benefit his brother, Andrew, and also conspired to defraud him and Andrew of their 

rights to expected inheritances. Andrew is deceased, but Sarvis asserted that he has 

standing to litigate his brother’s claims, which, he insisted, had been assigned to him by 

the executor of Andrew’s estate. The district court reasoned that none of the claims 

 

*

 After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral 

argument is unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record.

See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 

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No. 15-2207 Page 2 

belonging to Andrew had been assigned to Sarvis, and that Sarvis did not state any claim 

of his own. We affirm the judgment. 

 Andrew, who died in June 2014, was among the beneficiaries of separate trusts 

created by his maternal grandmother and uncle. The uncle, James Hammond, and 

Sarvis’s maternal aunt, Mary Rodman, served as co-trustees of the grandmother’s trust, 

along with BMO Harris. The bank also was a co-trustee, with Kenneth Nykiel, of the 

uncle’s trust. In addition, Andrew had created a trust for his own benefit, and one of 

Mary Rodman’s daughters, Margaret McElrath, was trustee at the time of his death. 

Andrew suffered from physical and mental impairments, and under the terms of the 

uncle’s trust he was entitled to payments from the income and corpus for his support 

and medical care if the trustees determined that his resources were insufficient to cover 

those costs. Sarvis, though, was not a beneficiary of any of these trusts. 

 Sarvis’s complaint, which relies on the diversity jurisdiction, names as defendants 

BMO Harris, Kenneth Nykiel, Margaret McElrath, and McElrath’s two siblings, 

Sally Deforest and Thomas Rodman. Sarvis alleges that McElrath, Deforest, and Rodman 

conspired to persuade their mother, whom the grandmother’s trust had given discretion 

to distribute Michigan real estate that was part of the corpus, to deprive Andrew of a 

share of the property. BMO Harris and Nykiel, Sarvis continues, breached their fiduciary 

duty as trustees of the uncle’s trust by hoarding assets throughout Andrew’s lifetime 

when they knew or should have known that Andrew was in dire need of money to cover 

living and medical expenses. McElrath similarly breached her fiduciary duty, says Sarvis 

in his complaint, by looting Andrew’s trust. 

All of those allegations would seem to relate exclusively to Andrew. Sarvis 

further alleges, though, that McElrath and Rodman pressured Andrew to execute a will 

leaving everything to McElrath’s son and nothing to Sarvis. This contention is not new; 

Sarvis challenged the will when it was probated in an Illinois circuit court, but he settled 

that challenge by agreeing not to “attempt to file any citations on behalf of the Estate, or 

oppose the closing of the estate,” in exchange for $10,000 and the assignment equally 

with his sister of Andrew’s “personal effects and other tangible personal property.” 

Sarvis’s sister reassigned her half to Sarvis, who then filed this action. 

 In dismissing the suit on the defendants’ motions, the district court reasoned that 

Sarvis lacks standing to complain about conduct that harmed only Andrew because he is 

not the executor of Andrew’s estate. The court rejected as unreasonable Sarvis’s 

contention that the “personal effects and other tangible personal property” given to him 

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No. 15-2207 Page 3 

by the settlement agreement include intangible rights of action. What’s more, the court 

continued, Sarvis cannot prevail against his cousins, McElrath and Rodman, for 

prodding Andrew to disinherit him because Sarvis already had settled that claim when 

he challenged Andrew’s will. Sarvis’s factual allegations and legal theories, the court 

noted, were the same in state court, and thus the final judgment approving the 

settlement agreement and dismissing the will contest with prejudice should be given 

“res judicata effect.” 

 On appeal Sarvis continues to insist that he may litigate claims for injuries to 

Andrew as the assignee of Andrew’s “personal effects and other tangible personal 

property.” The district court erred, he says, by misdefining “personal effects” to exclude 

rights of action. Sarvis also argues that the district court wrongly assumed that his claim 

about the Michigan real estate was brought on Andrew’s behalf. The undue influence 

occurred in Texas, Sarvis explains, and thus he has a personal stake because as Andrew’s 

heir he is an “interested person” under Texas law. Finally, Sarvis contends that the court 

erred in precluding his claim that Andrew was duped into leaving him nothing. This 

claim, Sarvis says, is for tortious interference, which is legally distinguishable from a will 

contest because the parties and remedy are different. We reject all of these contentions. 

 The district court correctly dismissed the claims alleging a breach of a fiduciary 

duty running to Andrew because Sarvis does not have standing to bring them. Sarvis 

misconstrues the unambiguous language of the settlement agreement, which assigns to 

him only Andrew’s “personal effects and other tangible property,” not rights of action or 

other intangibles. The settlement agreement provides that Illinois law shall govern 

questions of interpretation, and in Illinois the term “personal effects” usually refers to 

tangible personal property “worn on, carried by, or otherwise having an intimate 

relation to the person.” In re Estate of Goodkind, 827 N.E.2d 6, 13–14 (Ill. App. 2005) 

(quoting Landstrom v. Sarvis Krettler, 435 N.E.2d 149, 151 (Ill. App. 1982)). Illinois courts 

have recognized that the term may have a broader meaning if its use creates a latent 

ambiguity in the contract and the drafter’s “intent suggest[s] a construction beyond the 

term’s ordinary meaning.” Id. at 14. But that is not the situation here. The settlement 

agreement assigns Andrew’s “personal effects and other tangible personal property” to 

Sarvis. On its face the agreement confines itself to the ordinary meaning of “personal 

effects.” The text is unambiguous, and it is no less so simply because Sarvis now asserts 

that it would have been unreasonable for him to accept a settlement giving him only 

Andrew’s minimal tangible items (along with $10,000, which he neglects to mention). 

Because Sarvis is not the assignee of any intangible property, he is not the rightful owner 

of any legal claim that might have been part of Andrew’s estate. 

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The district court also correctly dismissed the claim that Sarvis was wrongly 

excluded from his brother’s will, as that claim is negated by the settlement agreement. 

We agree with Sarvis that, under Illinois law, a will contest is distinct from a tort action 

for intentional interference with a testamentary expectation. See Bjork v. O’Meara, 986 

N.E.2d 626, 631 (Ill. 2013). Illinois courts will not allow the tort action to proceed, 

however, if the practical effect of the action would be to invalidate a will already 

recognized as valid under the Probate Act. See Robinson v. First State Bank of Monticello, 

454 N.E.2d 288, 294 (Ill. 1983) (“[I]f we were to allow the plaintiffs to maintain their tort 

action, we would be giving them a second bite of the apple and defeating the purpose of 

the exclusivity of a will contest under [the Probate Act].”). This limitation on the tort 

action—what the district court characterized as a “res judicata effect”—applies when the 

plaintiff had “an opportunity to contest a probated will but chose not do so, and 

subsequently enter[ed] into an agreement to take no further court action.” Bjork, 986 

N.E.2d at 632 (quoting In re Estate of Ellis, 923 N.E.2d 237, 242 (Ill. 2009)). In Robinson the 

court did not allow the plaintiffs to proceed with their action for tortious interference 

because they had previously chosen not to contest the probated will, entering instead 

into a settlement agreement for $125,000 in which they agreed to release the other parties 

from all claims arising from the will. Id. at 293. As with the plaintiffs in Robinson, Sarvis 

not only had notice of Andrew’s probated will, he also challenged the will in state court 

and ultimately accepted $10,000 and Andrew’s “personal effects and other tangible 

property” in exchange for abandoning his challenge to the will and releasing all claims 

against the estate. Sarvis, therefore, fails to state a claim for tortious interference because 

that claim is no longer available to him. 

Finally, the district court correctly dismissed for lack of standing Sarvis’s claim of 

conspiracy against McElrath, Deforest, and Rodman for unfairly influencing their 

mother to deprive Andrew of his share of the real estate in Michigan. Sarvis asserts that 

he has standing as an “interested person” because he stood to inherit 50% of the 

property as Andrew’s heir. But Sarvis has no interest in Andrew’s estate because he is 

not a beneficiary of Andrew’s validly probated will, which Sarvis agreed not to contest. 

AFFIRMED. 

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