In cemeteries across Fairfield County, residents have decreed they be laid to an eternity”™s peaceful slumber in graves and vaults.
For some, their last wills and testaments are another matter ”“ and the phrase “liquidated assets” has never seemed more apropos.
The law firm of Martin, Lucas & Chioffi L.L.P. is suing Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp., claiming hundreds of its clients”™ estate documents were ruined after water pipes burst above a branch-basement “will vault” in Greenwich where the papers were stored in three filing cabinets.
Accessing the files on Sept. 5, three months after the burst, a Martin, Lucas & Chioffi employee discovered that between mold and water damage, client signatures had been completely washed away.
According to the lawsuit, another law firm storing estate documents in the “will vault” was notified of the burst pipes, and was able to salvage its documents in storage.
Estate planning is big business in moneyed Fairfield County ”“ and it is a business perhaps more reliant on the word “trust” than any other. Martin, Lucas & Chioffi states it has taken a hit to its reputation, and claims monetary damage in excess of $75,000, without yet setting an upper cap. The company did not disclose how it informed clients of the incident, or their reaction.
Martin, Lucas & Chioffi has offices in Stamford and New York City. Among cases listed on its Web site, the firm highlights an $11 million discrimination verdict against Fairfield-based General Electric Co. and a $1.1 million verdict against the predecessor company of Danbury-based Cartus Corp.
The firm”™s trust and estate practice is led by partner Mark Chioffi, a University of Connecticut graduate. In the lawsuit, the company did not divulge why it had chosen a bank for storing the documents, as opposed to a more traditional archive such as those run by Boston-based Iron Mountain Inc. The firm stated, however, that Bank of America personnel had offered assurances that the vault carried all the provisions of a branch”™s safety-deposit boxes.
Martin, Lucas & Chioffi contacted Munters Moisture Control Services, a Sweden-based company with an office in Edison, N.J., to try to salvage the damaged items. All the mop-up duty Munters could muster was not enough to save the day, however.
Connecticut”™s statutes on estate law run more than 100 pages. Probate law has ample precedent for how to handle wills that are destroyed in cases where valid copies do not exist. Those rules generally allow proponents to prove the validity of a document by confirmation of its contents along with evidence it was executed with proper formalities.
In many states, judges assume that if a will cannot be located that was known to be last in the possession of the deceased testator; it is assumed the person destroyed it and the will”™s known contents are not enforceable.
That was not the case in the Martin, Lucas & Chioffi case, seemingly keeping the door shut against any disgruntled contestants of a will”™s legitimacy. What”™s more, it is unlikely any “active” estate cases would have been housed at Martin, Lucas & Chioffi”™s offices, according to an attorney familiar with law office practices who did not want to be identified, given attorneys”™ need to have easy access to documents for revisions that are made while a property owner is still alive.
