Family of Former Providence Journal Owners Battle Over Control of Tens of Millions in Family Trusts
GoLocalProv Business Team
Family of Former Providence Journal Owners Battle Over Control of Tens of Millions in Family Trusts
The family was a major shareholder in the media company. Patriarchs of the family led the company for decades.
Fast forward 25 years, and now the three children of the late publisher Michael Metcalf are suing their mother Charlotte’s lawyers for allegedly violating the tenets of a group of trusts that control significant portions of the family's wealth.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe lawsuit filed in Providence Superior Court states as background that the “Plaintiffs are the children of Michael Pierce Metcalf (“Michael”). Born into a prominent Rhode Island family, Michael made many significant contributions to the state including as publisher of the Providence Journal and CEO and Chairman of the Providence Journal Company. Michael died in September 1987, when Hannah, Jesse, and Lucy, were 14, 12, and 10 years old, respectively. During his life, Michael established a number of trusts for the benefit of his wife Charlotte and his children.”
This lawsuit is the latest in a decade of legal maneuvering over the control of the trust and the massive fortune.
Metcalf’s Death and Investigation
Metcalf died in Westport, Massachusetts, early on a September Sunday morning in 1987 of a head injury while biking. Some at the Providence Journal believed Michael Metcalf was murdered.
His father before him was the publisher of the Providence Journal, and his great-grandmother founded the Rhode Island School of Design. As a family, they made their wealth as leading industrialists, publishers, and investors. Family members were U.S. senators, and others were governors.
Some thought Melcalf’s death was somehow linked to the Providence Journal's reporting over the years about the Patriarca Crime Family. In the early 1960s, Raymond Patriarca became so incensed with the newspaper's reporting he took out an ad criticizing the paper's journalism.
“For many years past your newspapers have intermittently insinuated that I am the head of some vague underworld of crime. In your colored and slanted news columns, I have been gratuitously characterized by the most unsavory names.”
Patriarca announced in the ad that he was suing the Journal.
Bevilacqua and Patriarca
The Journal reporting in the mid-1980s dug into the ethics and personal behavior of then-State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Bevilacqua.
The newspaper had tracked Bevilacqua to the Alpine Motel in Smithfield for the use of “Room 30” in which the Judge met twice with a Rhode Island woman and once with a woman from Massachusetts. Each time the meetings were for about an hour the Journal reported. In reporting the story, the newspaper published an accompanying photo of Bevilacqua leaving the motel room, pulling up his pants zipper.
The photo of Bevilacqua infuriated his close friends and associates of the judge.
According to the FBI file on Raymond Patriarca secured by GoLocal through a Freedom of Information Act request, he had a relationship with Bevilacqua that went back years.
Investigations
After Metcalf's death, Bristol County Massachusetts District Attorney Ronald Pina initiated an investigation.
He announced his findings a few months later.
'Foul play was ruled out only after interviews with dozens of individuals, painstaking reviews of the evidence and evaluation of every possible cause-and-effect relationship in this case were completed,' Pina was quoted in a UPI story published in February of 1988.
'It may have been an accident, albeit a very unusual one,' [succeeding publisher at the Journal Steve] Hamblett said. 'However, we cannot forget that Mr. Metcalf was publisher of newspapers known for their investigative stories and editorials on crime.'
The Journal assigned a pair of reporters to investigate Metcalf’s death. It was a time that the Journal had hundreds of reporters. Today, the paper has about ten full-time news reporters.
The Washington Post also reported on Metcalf’s death.
“The Journal reporters, having spent five months reconstructing the accident, are skeptical that Metcalf could have been traveling up a steep hill at 20 mph, as Pina's office estimated. Charlotte Metcalf has said she later rode up the incline on the country road where her husband was found unconscious and that she could bicycle no faster than 10 mph,” wrote the Post.
According to the July 30, 1988, Post story, “Dr. Mel Epstein, chief of neurosurgery at Rhode Island Hospital, who was present during Metcalf's surgery, said the publisher suffered the kind of skull fracture and brain damage ‘which we ordinarily see with high-velocity accidents, such as automobiles going over 50 miles per hour. It is possible he could have fallen off his bike and suffered those kinds of injuries, but it's a freak occurrence.’”
“Other oddities -- such as the fact that Metcalf's wallet was found in his sock, although his wife says he never carried it that way -- have only deepened the sense of mystery,” the Post reported.
Claims by Children Against Their Mother
The lawsuit now pending in Providence Superior Court alleges that their mother violated the terms of the web of family trusts.
The children claim in the lawsuit, “In the years after Michael’s death, Charlotte undertook a course of action to take control over the trusts benefiting Michael’s family line – both the Metcalf Trusts established by Michael and the Legacy Trusts created by Michael’s father.
Charlotte herself was not a beneficiary of any of those trusts other than the Marital Trust and the 1984 Trust.
Charlotte unseated the existing individual trustees of the Legacy Trusts, had herself appointed as a trustee and chose her co-trustees.”
“…over time, Charlotte secured the resignations of the trustees chosen by Michael for the Metcalf Trusts he created and replaced those trustees with trustees of her choosing. In this way, and others, Charlotte insinuated herself into the administration of trusts established by Michael and his father for the benefit of Michael’s children and into the management of the significant assets held in those trusts. Over the years, if a trustee or investment manager did not agree with Charlotte, she would replace them with a successor that she hand-picked,” claims the suit.
The lawsuit is levied against two lawyers and the law firm in which they practice -- named are Nancy Dempze, Stephen Kidder, and the Boston-based firm Hemenway & Barnes LLP (H&B).
The lawsuit claims, "[Charlotte] also ensured that H&B attorneys would always be able to appoint other H&B counsel as successor trustees of the trust. Dempze and H&B undertook these actions to benefit their interests and ignored legitimate and valid objections voiced by Hannah, Jesse and Lucy as current beneficiaries of the trust. These actions by Dempze and H&B further evidence their ongoing conflict of interest and their willingness to put the interests of their firm over those of trust beneficiaries to whom they owe fiduciary duties and duties of loyalty and care."
The four-count lawsuit seeks to:
- Removal of Dempze and Kidder as Trustees of the 1984 Trust;
- Removal of Dempze as Trustee of the Marital Trusts
- An order prohibiting H&B from acting as counsel to the Metcalf Trusts or to trustees of the Metcalf Trusts;
- An award of damages;
- An order that the Trust reimburse Plaintiffs for the attorneys’ fees and costs incurred in connection with this action; and
- Such other relief as the Court deems appropriate.
GoLocal reached out to Dempze, Kidder, and the managing partner of H&B, Nancy Gardiner - none of the three responded to requests for comment.