Opinion ID: 2232870
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Date of Divestiture

Text: As we have noted, in determining whether a fiduciary has acted prudently, a court may examine a fiduciary's conduct throughout the entire period during which the investment at issue was held ( see , Matter of Donner , 82 NY2d, at 585-586, supra ). The court may then determine, within that period, the reasonable time within which divesture of the imprudently held investment should have occurred ( see , Matter of Weston , 91 N.Y. 502, 510-511). What constitutes a reasonable time will vary from case to case and is not fixed or arbitrary ( see , id. , at 510-511). The test remains the diligence and prudence of prudent and intelligent [persons] in the management of their own affairs ( id. , at 511 [citations omitted]). Thus, in Donner , we upheld both the Surrogate's examination of the fiduciary's conduct throughout the entire period during which the investment at issue was retained in finding liability, and the Surrogate's selection of the date of the testator's death as the time when the trustee should have divested the estate of its substantial holdings in high-risk securities (82 NY2d, at 585-586, supra ). Again, there is evidentiary support in the record for the trial court's finding, affirmed by the Appellate Division, that a prudent fiduciary would have divested the estate's stock portfolio of its high concentration of Kodak stock by August 9, 1973, thereby exhausting our review powers on this issue. Petitioner's own internal documents and correspondence, as well as the testimony of Patterson, Young, and objectants' experts, establish that by that date, petitioner had all the information a prudent investor would have needed to conclude that the percentage of Kodak stock in the estate's stock portfolio was excessive and should have been reduced significantly, particularly in light of the estate's over-all investment portfolio and the financial requirements of Mrs. Janes and the charitable beneficiaries.