Judge Rejects Racist Will

This week a Newmarket, Ontario judge overturned a man’s last will and testament because his deathbed pleas were overtly racist. 

Judge C.A. Gilmore overturned Jamaican-born Rector Emanuel (Eric) Spence’s will, because he had disinherited a daughter who gave birth to a white man’s child. 

This is the first known case of a judge nullifying an entire will on the grounds that the motivations of the dead offended “public policy.”

See Jen Gerson, Judge Rejects Ontario Man’s ‘Racist Will’ That Disinherited Daughter for Having ‘Bastard White Son’, National Post, Jan. 29, 2015. 

Special thanks to Naomi Cahn (Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.