The mother of an heir to the Cecil Van Tuyl fortune has filed a lawsuit against a Kansas City law firm for taking legal action that caused the loss of an $80 million family trust.
Paula Logan originally sued Martin, Pringle, Oliver, Wallace & Bauer law firm in Jackson County circuit court but the complaint was removed to the Missouri Western District federal court where Judge Roseann Ketchmark presides.
“This is an action against Martin Pringle and Mr. Busch for legal malpractice based on their complete failure to competently and carefully represent Chad Logan in connection with a lawsuit that defendants prepared and filed for Mr. Logan,” wrote Paula Logan’s St. Louis attorney James Monafo in the June 15 complaint.
The lawsuit alleges that after the son, Chad Logan, had a dispute with trustees for the trust established for him by his grandparents, the Van Tuyls, the defendant attorneys advised him that a lawsuit they filed for him would not violate a ‘no contest provision’ in those trusts. Paula Logan, mother of Chad Logan, also is his personal representative, according to the complaint.
“This legal advice was completely, and unjustifiably, wrong,” the complaint states. “On May 18, 2018, a court entered a declaratory judgment finding that Mr. Logan had, through the lawsuit prepared and filed by Defendants, violated the No-Contest Provision in the Trusts and forfeited any interest in those Trusts.”
A no contest provision is included in a trust by an individual who doesn’t want their estate or will to be challenged upon death.
“The grandson sued, lost, and lost the money,” said St. Louis attorney Sydney Chase. “Now his attorneys are being sued for malpractice and the measure of damages for malpractice, if you were truly negligent as a lawyer and you did something which no competent reasonable lawyer would do, is what it cost the client and in this case, that would be the client's $80 million-plus interest from the date the estate was first entitled to the money.”
Logan, who struggled with mental illness, was 45 years old when he died in March, according to the Kansas City Business Journal. His grandfather, the late Cecil Van Tuyl, earned billions of dollars in the auto industry before his death in 2012.
“There's a big question here,” Chase told the St. Louis Record. “If the defendants were on a contingency basis, I have a feeling there is venality here. If they were on a straight clock, why wouldn't they go to the court? Why wouldn't they ask the court for benefit of the statute?”
Paula Logan is requesting a trial by jury for legal malpractice but the defendants have filed a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, improper, and failure to state a claim.
"It doesn't really matter which court is going to have the case because the law is pretty similar whether in federal or state court," Chase said. "They must apply Missouri law because it's a Missouri trust."