Susan and Nell Newman Sue Newman's Own Foundation

Early last week, Susan and Nell Newman, daughters of the late Paul Newman, sued the Newman's Own Foundation. You can read the complaint here.

I'll spend some time this week going into more detail about the Newman's Own suit. The short version, though, is that the daughters allege that the Newman's Own foundation was supposed to make grants of at least $400,000 to each daughter's private foundation so that the daughters could direct some of the charitable money themselves (and pay themselves salaries).

They allege that almost immediately after their father's death, NOF stopped making donations directly to their foundations (in violation of their father's wishes and directive) and, instead, allowed each daughter to choose the recipients of $400,000 of money and that, more recently, NOF has cut that amount in half.

The suit asks for damages of about $1.6 million, as well as a declaratory judgment that NOF contribute $400,000 annually to the daughters' charitable foundations going forward.

It will be interesting to watch what happens in this dispute.

Samuel D. Brunson