The heirs of a famous Missourian are seeking $85 million dollars in appreciated damages plus unspecified punitive damages because a bank allegedly undersold their ancestor’s artwork.
UMB Financial was a trustee of 20th-century painter Thomas Hart Benton’s estate after he died in 1975.
R. Crosby Kemper Jr., who is deceased, was chair of UMB at the time.
“Rather than having them appraised appropriately or put up for a public bidding, they gave sweetheart deals to their friends and if any of that's true, it’s a really, really bad thing,” said Mark McCloskey, a St. Louis personal injury attorney.
Benton’s murals can be found in the state capitol building and copies of his paintings are hanging in major St. Louis and Kansas City offices.
"For people who have a few bucks put aside, it means being constantly vigilant that your trustees are, in fact, acting in absolute good faith and fair dealing," McCloskey said. "The only thing more wrong than saying 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help' is 'I'm from the bank and I'm here to improve your wealth' and instead the bank is there to improve the bank's wealth."
Benton Hart’s daughter and three children sued UMB in 2019 in Jackson County’s 16th Circuit Court.
“They had a trust for which they were the beneficiaries,” McCloskey told the St. Louis Record. “Your trustee owes you a duty of absolute good faith and fair dealing. You should not have to watch over their transactions. If any of this is true, it shocks me that Crosby Kemper and the bank would've engaged in these activities.”
Judge Mark Styles is hearing the case without a jury, which has its advantages and disadvantages, according to media reports.
“Both sides must have consented to a judge,” McCloskey said in an interview. “When we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes you're concerned about how a jury might react to numbers of that size and think that the family may have had too much money to begin with and are just being spoiled.”
Looking back, McCloskey said that Benton’s daughter should have had more than one person overseeing the estate.
“You need to have some people with conflicting financial interests so that if one person puts their hand in the till, somebody else will want to slam it closed,” he added.
As previously reported by NPR, UMB filed a civil racketeering lawsuit in the Western District of Missouri federal couort against the heirs but it was dismissed by Chief U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips last year.