T&E Litigation Update: "Purcell v. Landers"

In Purcell v. Landers, Case No. 10-P-1757, 2011 Mass. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1251 (Dec. 6, 2011), a decision issued pursuant to Rule 1:28, the Appeals Court affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part the probate court's disposition of a will contest.

The decedent had one adopted daughter, the plaintiff Lisa Purcell, and they were described as "estranged" from each other. The decedent was afraid of the plaintiff, who had admitted to sufficient facts and a guilty finding of threatening to commit a crime against the decedent, apparently for threatening to burn down his house with him in it, and whom the decedent said had taken $26,000 from him during his lifetime.

In his will, the decedent left only $1 to the plaintiff, leaving the rest to his friend, the defendant Richard Landers, whom the decedent also named as executor. The defendant was described as the decedent's "one true friend" for many years both before and after the death of the decedent's wife in 1984.