Opinion ID: 2102034
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Malpractice and Breach of Fiduciary Duty Claims

Text: By 1978 John Lemp, Jr., noticed that his stepmother's attitude toward her stepchildren had begun to change, and he suspected that she might have done something with the property she had inherited from her late husband. John decided to investigate. On July 3, 1979, he went to the Superior Court to review the records pertaining to his father's estate. What he discovered aroused his suspicions even further. First, his father's signature on the will did not look authentic, and the will had been executed at a time when his father was gravely ill and, in John's view, his testamentary capacity was doubtful. Further, the will did not even mention any of Colonel Lemp's three children, nor did it dispose of various personal items mentioned in his previous will. Finally, John discovered that, despite his father's wealth, the estate had been handled as a small estate. John discussed his misgivings with an attorney standing nearby, who coincidentally had some recollection of the small-estate proceedings. The attorney remarked that John would have to take legal action if he wanted to question the administration of his father's estate. Despite John's doubts, which he shared with his brother and sister, about Mary's inheritance of all the Colonel's estate, the stepchildren chose not to challenge Mary while she was alive. Because they fully expected to receive their father's estate by bequest from Mary, they did not perceive Mary's possible wrongdoing as detrimental to their interests. Consequently, they did not file any malpractice action until after Mary died, when they discovered to their astonishment that she had left the bulk of what she had inherited from the Colonel to her own relatives. Appellants' claim against Mr. Peter and his law firm was in two parts. First, they alleged that Mr. Peter had committed malpractice in 1973 by negligently failing to explore means by which they would receive most of the Colonel's assets. Second, they claimed that Hamel & Park had breached their fiduciary duty to the Colonel and to them, his children and the natural objects of his bounty, by preparing two subsequent wills for Mary which substantially disinherited them. [5] The trial court ruled that both the malpractice claim and the breach of fiduciary duty claim were barred by the statute of limitations. The court reasoned that the statute began to run as to each claim upon John's review of his father's will in July 1979, and accordingly it granted summary judgment for Mr. Peter and Hamel & Park. Appellants appeal from this ruling as well.