Rhode Island Hospital Trust Nat. Bank v. Israel
| Decision Date | 29 August 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 76-52-A,76-52-A |
| Citation | 119 R.I. 298,377 A.2d 341 |
| Parties | RHODE ISLAND HOSPITAL TRUST NATIONAL BANK, Trustee v. Richard J. ISRAEL, Attorney General, et al. ppeal. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
Laura B. Sims (the testatrix) died in 1931 and in her will, which was probated in the city of Warwick, bequeathed a one-fifth share of the residue of her estate to the Providence Tuberculosis League (the League), a charitable organization. In 1974, when the time arrived for distribution of that share, the League's charter had been forfeited and it was no longer in existence. Thereupon, Rhode Island Hospital Trust National Bank, trustee under the testatrix's will, instituted this civil action for a determination of whether the testatrix had a general or special charitable intent in making the bequest to the League, and, if her intent was general, for directions on how the doctrine of cy pres should be applied to that bequest. Named as the defendants were the Attorney General of the state; Children's Friend and Service (the Service), a nonbusiness corporation; Rhode Island Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association, now known as Rhode Island Lung Association (the Association), also a nonbusiness corporation; and Laura Martin, the surviving daughter of Clara T. Parsons who was the testatrix's heir. At the hearing in the Superior Court, Laura Martin did not appear, the Attorney General submitted the interests of the public to the court's care, and both the Association and the Service agreed that the testatrix had a general charitable intent in making the bequest to the League and that the doctrine of cy pres should therefore be applied. They disagreed, however, on which of them would so administer the League's share as to best carry out that intent. At the conclusion of that hearing, the trial justice found that the testatrix did not intend merely to make a gift to the League but that she manifested a general charitable intent and accordingly, pursuant to G.L.1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 18-4-1, 1 he directed that the doctrine of cy pres be applied and that the share be given to the Service. The Association appealed.
The League's purpose, as stated in its charter, was to conduct "a persistent campaign against tuberculosis in the city of Providence by the stimulation and promotion of work in every field which concerns the prevention and eradication of the disease." From 1912 to 1951, first as a committee of Family Service, Inc. and later under its own corporate name, the League maintained a tuberculosis preventorium at a leased facility known as the Lakeside Home for Convalescent and Sickly Mothers and Children (Lakeside), where it provided care to children and mothers who were sick, convalescing, or in need of supportive physical care to avert illness. In the later years of this period (1934-1951), that care was rendered principally to children.
By 1950, however, it had become impractical to operate Lakeside, in part because the property had deteriorated to such an extent as to make it unsuitable for child occupancy, and in part because radical changes in the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis had rendered preventoria obsolete. Consequently, the League discontinued its operations at Lakeside in 1951 and, with the approval of the Council of Social Agencies and under authority of two Superior Court decrees, 2 the real estate on which Lakeside was situated was transferred to the Service. At the same time some of the equipment and personal property in use at the Lakeside facility and certain of the endowment funds that the League had received for the use of Lakeside were also transferred. Thereafter, the Service conducted a program in a newly constructed building at Lakeside that provides short-term protective care for children. The Service's Lakeside program, however, is only incidentally concerned with health and not at all with the eradication or cure of tuberculosis.
The Association's program is entirely different. It is principally concerned with the prevention and control of lung diseases. Although it thus appears to have the same overall objectives as the defunct League, its program, unlike that formerly conducted by the League at Lakeside, is not patient- or treatment-oriented. Rather, it is concerned with informing and educating the public about the dangers of tuberculosis and the availability of tuberculosis testing, and with fostering and coordinating tuberculosis prevention activity in the area.
Although this case involves an intended charitable beneficiary that had ceased to exist before the gift to it took effect, the trial justice's obligation was the same as in other cy pres situations: to substitute for the named beneficiary another charitable organization which satisfies the original dispositive purpose as closely as possible. Section 18-4-1; Fisch, Freed & Schachter, Charities and Charitable Foundations, § 578 at 447 (1974); 2 Restatement (Second) Trusts § 399 at 297 (1959); see Rhode Island Hosp. Trust Co. v. Williams, 50 R.I. 385, 148 A. 189 (1929).
The critical issue for the trial justice then, was to determine whether in making this gift to the League the testatrix manifested, as argued by the Service, a primary commitment to the maintenance of an institution concerned with caring for the physical and mental well being of individual children on a local level, or whether instead, as urged by the Association, it would have been her wish after the closing of the Lakeside Preventorium that her bequest be used for the prevention of tuberculosis and other lung diseases through education.
The trial justice decided that issue in favor of the Service, and the Association now argues that his decision relied too heavily on the evidence that all the charitable institutions named as beneficiaries in the residuary clause of the testatrix's will were patient-care, treatment-oriented service institutions. It argues that he should instead have given greater weight to the evidence that the...
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