F̶a̶m̶i̶l̶y̶ Radio Drama Network

Last time I blogged here, I spent several days talking about the family drama surrounding the Newman's Own Foundation. (Here, here, here, and here to be precise.)

Yesterday, the New York Times dropped a story about another family nonprofit drama, this one concerning the Himan Brown Charitable Trust and the aptly named Radio Drama Network (which is also a tax-exempt organization).

Himan Brown created, produced, wrote, and directed radio dramas, starting in roughly the golden age of radio dramas and continuing throughout his long life. While he passed away in 2010 (just shy of his 100th birthday), he, like many, established a legacy: a charitable foundation. That foundation, organized as a trust, provides funds to charitable organizations that further Mr. Brown's legacy.

But the trust is embroiled in familial controversy and litigation: Brown's granddaughter, who runs the Radio Drama Network, claims that, at 94, her grandfather was fraudulently induced to entrust his legacy to sole trustee Richard Kay, who was also Brown's lawyer and helped create the trust. (There also seem to be allegations that a former board member-turned-consultant was unqualified to run the trust because he had been Mr. Brown's personal trainer.)

Kay asserts that the trust was specifically organized to keep Brown's money out of the hands of his family, from whom he was estranged.

It's amazing drama surrounding a legacy of drama, but the Times story confuses me a little bit. Specifically, I'm not clear on why it's being published now. On the Bloomberg Law docket I could find, the last entry in the case seems to have been on December 15, 2020. There is an opinion from October 2020 (187 A.D.3d 526), but that's the last substantive decision I could find on Westlaw. And the New York judicial website? It is, unsurprisingly, a disaster, website-wise, but I couldn't find anything about the case there. (And, of course, the Times doesn't link to anything.)

So I don't know if there's been movement in the case, or this is just an interesting, if legally stale, story about the internal drama of a wealthy New York family.

Either way, though, it is interesting how even charity can exacerbate familial divisions.

Samuel D. Brunson

Image: Radio. United States, 1928. [Date Received] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017680267/.