Carlton v. Carlton, 90-01542
| Decision Date | 06 February 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 90-01542,90-01542 |
| Citation | 575 So.2d 239,16 Fla. L. Weekly 432 |
| Parties | 16 Fla. L. Weekly 432 Ben S. CARLTON and Winston C. Carlton, Appellants, v. Barbara B. CARLTON and Charles R. Baumann, Co-Personal Representatives of the Estate of T. Mabry Carlton, Jr., Deceased, Appellees. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Stevan T. Northcutt of Levine, Hirsch, Segall & Northcutt, P.A., Tampa, and W. Russell Snyder of Snyder & Groner, Venice, for appellants.
A. Lamar Matthews, Jr., Theodore C. Eastmoore and Arthur S. Hardy of Williams, Parker, Harrison, Dietz & Getzen, Sarasota, for appellees.
In this appeal, appellants, Ben S. Carlton and Winston C. Carlton, challenge the final order that dismissed their complaint against appellees, Barbara B. Carlton and Charles R. Baumann, co-personal representatives of the estate of T. Mabry Carlton, Jr., the deceased brother of appellants. For the following reasons, we reverse and remand for further proceedings below.
The parties to the events leading to these proceedings represent one of Florida's oldest and most respected families. Directly involved in those events were: T. Mabry Carlton, Sr. ("Jack"); his wife, Septa; and their three sons, T. Mabry Carlton, Jr. (Mabry), now deceased, and appellants, Ben S. and Winston C. Carlton. Appellee, Barbara B. Carlton, is Mabry's widow and co-personal representative of his estate. Jack and Septa are both in their eighties. Septa suffers from Alzheimer's disease and has been judicially declared incompetent. Mabry died in an airplane crash in June 1989. On January 30, 1990, Mabry's two brothers, appellants, filed a one-count complaint, styled "Complaint for Damages for Intentional Interference with Expectancies" against appellees as co-personal representatives of Mabry's estate.
Appellants base their cause of action on allegations of various actions of their brother, Mabry Carlton, that allegedly interfered with their expectancies in their parents' estates and other rights or properties of appellants. They further allege that they did not and could not have reasonably discovered the existence of their cause of action until the facts came to light following Mabry's death in June 1989. Appellants' complaint contains fifty-nine separately numbered paragraphs in which they allege, among other things: In 1959, Jack and Septa Carlton transferred their ownership in 17,500 acres of ranch lands to a family corporation, Mabry Carlton & Sons Ranch, Inc.; Mabry Carlton intentionally interfered with appellants' expectancies in their parents' estates; their parents had a lifelong fixed intent to treat all their sons equally in the final distribution of the parents' estates based on generations of "equal inheritance" in the Carlton family and as evidenced by wills executed in 1981; Mabry Carlton had a confidential and dominant relationship with his parents and his brothers; Mabry influenced his parents to execute new wills in 1982 which excluded appellant Ben Carlton and his family from the parents' estates; Mabry caused Ben Carlton to execute an irrevocable trust placing the ranch stock he had received from his parents into the trust for the benefit of Ben's daughters; Mabry caused his parents in 1983 to execute codicils to their wills that excluded appellant Winston Carlton and his family from the parents' estates; Mabry caused Winston to execute irrevocable trusts placing all of the ranch stock from his parents into the trust for the benefit of Winston's daughters; Mabry interfered in Ben's dissolution of marriage proceedings to Ben's disadvantage and ultimate bankruptcy; Mabry managed the family ranch so as to personally absorb most of the income from the ranch; Mabry actively caused the ranch corporation to procure the redemption of the ranch stock held by the irrevocable trusts of Winston and Ben at less than the true value of the stock; by causing Mabry Carlton & Sons Ranch, Inc. to redeem other outstanding stock in the family corporation, Mabry and his immediate family became the sole stockholders in the corporation, thereby controlling its $15,000,000 in assets to the exclusion of his parents and brothers; appellants have, by Mabry's actions, lost substantial portions of their expectancies in their parents' estates; Septa has Alzheimer's disease and has been judicially declared incompetent; and Mabry's actions were intentional, willful, malicious and done with conscious indifference to appellants' rights, greatly damaging appellants.
Finally, appellants' complaint contained a prayer for general damages against appellees as co-personal representatives of Mabry's estate. Appellants' complaint is not a textbook example of pleadings in that it apparently attempts to allege, in one count, several causes of action growing out of the tort of intentional interference with appellants' expectancies in their parents' estates as well as actions arising out of undue influence and breach of an alleged confidential relationship regarding appellants' rights and properties unconnected to their parents' potential estates.
Our primary concern in this appeal is not whether or what or even how many causes of action appellants have attempted to allege in their complaint. The trial judge dismissed appellants' attempt to allege a cause of action solely on the basis that the action could not be maintained until such time as one or both of appellants' parents was deceased. Florida has for some time recognized the right to a cause of action based upon the tort of intentional interference with an expected gift or inheritance. Dewitt v. Duce, 408 So.2d 216 (Fla.1981); Watts v. Haun, 393 So.2d 54 (Fla. 2d DCA 1981); Davison v. Feuerherd, 391 So.2d 799 (Fla. 2d DCA 1980); Allen v. Leybourne, 190 So.2d 825 (Fla. 3d DCA 1966). The sole issue presented to us by the ruling of the trial judge is whether such an action as is attempted to be alleged here is maintainable prior to the death of the grantors of the expected inheritance. As the court stated in the seminal case of Allen:
It has been established in Florida that the fact that there is not a right of action against the person who is induced or influenced to refuse to perform his agreement is not of itself a bar to an action against the third person maliciously and wantonly procuring the termination of or a refusal to perform the agreement.
190 So.2d at 828. Moreover, the Allen court also stated:
It is our opinion that when there is an allegation that the testator had a fixed intention to make a bequest in favor of the plaintiff and there existed a strong probability that this intention would have been carried out but for the wrongful acts of the defendant there exists a cause of action. While it is true that such a cause of action is difficult to prove, that does not affect the existence of a ground of tort liability. Thus, it was error to dismiss the count in the complaint charging interference with an expected bequest without leave to amend and in denying plaintiff's motion for leave to amend.
Appellants argued below and here that the circumstances surrounding their cause of action make it presently viable regardless of whether their parents are still living. We agree, not only in regard to appellants' expectations in their parents' future estates, but particularly in regard to the unresolved or unrecompensed claims that involve their separate rights and property interests that have been allegedly damaged and that are unrelated to their parents' future probate estate and, therefore, do not depend upon their parents' deaths to come into being.
Appellants have relied heavily on the decision of the Supreme Court of...
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