Not A $12 Million Dollar Man

SunEthics – a wonderful blog devoted to Florida legal ethics issues – has a story on the probate of the will of a woman who died at age 107 and left her almost $12 million estate to the drafting attorney and two others.

One was the attorney’s legal assistant; the other was the decedent’s accountant.

The Second District Court of Appeal held that the will was invalid

 At the age of 107, Virginia E. Murphy passed away, leaving behind an estate worth nearly twelve million dollars, a series of wills, a phalanx of potential heirs— and extensive litigation. Following a trial, appeal, and remand from this court, the probate court entered an order in which it concluded that the vast majority of Mrs. Murphy’s estate should pass through intestacy. For the reasons explained below, we are compelled to reverse the probate court’s order following remand because it failed to apply the presumption of dependent relative revocation to Mrs. Murphy’s last will.

As for the attorney

We need not recount all of the probate court’s findings of undue influence—which were quite extensive—but would echo the court’s sense of puzzlement as to why Mr. Carey, an esteemed lawyer and a former city councilman, FBI agent, and Army Air Corps veteran, succumbed to the temptation to pursue a pecuniary windfall at the expense of a frail and susceptible client. Sadly, the pall of this case cast a long shadow over an otherwise exemplary professional reputation. Cf. Fla. R. Prof. Conduct 4-1.8(c) (“A lawyer shall not . . . prepare on behalf of a client an instrument giving the lawyer . . . any substantial gift unless the lawyer . . . is related to the client.”). We make this observation not to impugn the memory of Mr. Carey, who passed away in 2014, but to state this simple point: the repercussions from a single ethical lapse may carry far beyond a lawyer’s license to practice law.

 The court reinstated an earlier will.

The Tampa Bay Times had this story on the litigation. (Mike Frisch)