Court Opinion

ID: 9543701
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:48:15.837718+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:57.431540
License: Public Domain

SHINN, P. J.
I dissent. I think this is just the type of ease in which the court should charge the costs of the executors against the estate and that it was an abuse of discretion to charge their costs of some $16,000 against the contestant, but not an abuse of discretion to require him to pay his own costs. When a vain and bitter old man, in his dotage, possessed of an estate of more than a million dollars, is so bereft of the natural instincts of a father as to disinherit his only son and leave vast properties as a public park for his own perpetual *319glorification, and where the son, through eminent counsel files a contest and it takes a jury some five days to decide the merits of the contest, this, I say, is just the sort of situation the court spoke of as “rare” and “peculiar” in Estate of Bump, 152 Cal. 271 [92 P. 642], in which an order was approved which charged the estate with the costs of an unsuccessful contest by the widow. I would reverse the order, insofar as it charged appellant with the costs of the executors.
A petition for a rehearing was denied August 7, 1953. Shinn, P. J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.
Appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied September 17, 1953.