CORRECTION, 7/1/13, 6:30 p.m. EST: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the U.S. state where Sergei Yates lives and where he initiated a legal action against local lawyer Jody Vannoy. It is Wyoming. The information has been corrected in the subheadline and first, seventh, and ninth paragraphs below. We regret the error.
A Wyoming man who was orphaned as a teenager when the airplane his father was piloting crashed on Martha's Vineyard is suing Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and one of the firm's lawyers over what the plaintiff claims is a years-long run of alleged negligence that has whittled down the value of his inheritance.
In his suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. district court in New Jersey, Sergei Yates names Skadden as a defendant, along with Robert Del Tufo, a former New Jersey attorney general now of counsel with the firm; two executors of the trusts at issue; and PNC Bank.
The story behind the lawsuit begins in 1994, when Charles Yates, a former New Jersey state lawmaker and prominent businessman, and his second wife, Anya Yates, adopted Sergei Yates in Russia and brought him back to the United States. Six years later, with Charles at the controls, a small plane carrying him, his wife, and the couple's two other young children to Martha's Vineyard crashed, killing all four.
According to his suit, Sergei Yates, who was 16 at the time of the accident, became the beneficiary of a series of trusts upon the death of his parents, including a $5 million fund connected to his parents' life insurance policies and another created with the proceeds from the estate of his mother, who died without a will. With the divvying up of Charles Yates's assets complicated by his five children from an earlier marriage, Sergei Yates soon "became involved in a controversy with his half-brothers and half-sisters over the proper distribution of their father's estate," according to the 17-page complaint.
Del Tufo and Skadden represented Yates in connection with the dispute beginning in 2003, ultimately securing him a sum equal to one-sixth of Charles Yates's estate that was placed into a third trust, the complaint says. (The crash also spawned a wrongful death suit brought by relatives of Anya Yates that resulted in a $1.8 million settlement for Sergei Yates, according to court filings.)
Sergei Yates, now 29, claims he has had little control over any of the trusts established in his name. Charles Yates's son Roy Yates served as sole trustee of the life insurance trust until late 2004, when he designated Winifred Benchley, a New Jersey legislator and wife of Jaws author Peter Benchley, to serve as cotrustee. The pair appointed PNC Bank as corporate fiduciary and cotrustee in 2004, according to the suit. Roy Yates, Benchley, and PNC—all named as defendants in the suit—also serve as trustees of the trust born out of the will dispute. Roy Yates and Benchley could not be reached for comment Friday. A PNC spokesman declined to comment.
