John Fitzgerald KENNEDY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. THE TRUSTEES OF the TESTAMENTARY TRUST OF the Last WILL and Testament OF President John F. KENNEDY, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 09-3043-cv.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Oct. 28, 2010.
507
* The Clerk of the Court is directed to amend the official caption to conform with the caption above.
For the foregoing reasons, the government‘s motion to dismiss the challenge to Alberto Diaz‘s sentence and Alberto Diaz‘s counsel‘s Anders motion are GRANTED, and Alberto Diaz‘s conviction and Javier Diaz‘s sentence are AFFIRMED.
Harlan A. Levy, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, New York, NY, for Defendants-Appellees.
PRESENT: GUIDO CALABRESI, DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON, Circuit Judges, PAUL A. CROTTY, District Judge.**
SUMMARY ORDER
Plaintiff-Appellant John Fitzgerald Kennedy appeals from a judgment of the District Court entered on June 19, 2009, 633 F.Supp.2d 77 (Pauley, J.), dismissing his Amended Complaint based on the probate exception to the federal courts’ diversity jurisdiction and on
With respect to the dismissal of one of Plaintiff‘s claims due to the “probate exception” to diversity jurisdiction, “[w]e review questions of subject-matter jurisdiction de novo.” Lefkowitz v. Bank of New York, 528 F.3d 102, 107 (2d Cir. 2007). We apply the same de novo standard of review to the dismissal of the remainder of his complaint for failure to state a claim under
As this Circuit has recently noted, “[t]he ‘probate exception’ is an historical aspect of federal 20 jurisdiction that holds ‘probate matters’ are excepted from the scope of federal diversity 21 jurisdiction.” Lefkowitz v. Bank of New York, 528 F.3d 102, 105 (2d Cir. 2007). In Marshall v. Marshall, 547 U.S. 293, 126 S.Ct. 1735, 164 L.Ed.2d 480 (2006), the Supreme Court clarified the scope of this exception, stating that it “reserves to state probate courts the probate or annulment of a will and the administration of a decedent‘s estate; it also precludes federal courts from endeavoring to dispose of property that is in the custody of a state probate court. But it does not bar federal courts from adjudicating matters outside those confines and otherwise within federal jurisdiction.” Id. at 311-12, 126 S.Ct. 1735. We have thus found that the exception applied to claims in which the plaintiff sought “in essence, disgorgement of funds that remain under the control of the Probate Court,” Lefkowitz, 528 F.3d at 107, but not to claims of breach of fiduciary duty in which the defendant sought “damages from Defendants personally rather than assets or distributions from [an] estate.” Id. at 107-08.
The district court found that the exception applied to Plaintiff‘s request for an order compelling Defendants, upon proof of his claim to being a beneficiary of a class gift in President Kennedy‘s will, to pay to him funds from the testamentary trust representing his past, present, and future entitlement under the will. It found that the exception did not apply, however, to his request for an order that would compel Defendant Edelman to investigate Plaintiff‘s claim. We agree with respect to both claims. The Supreme Court has noted that “while a federal court may not exercise its jurisdiction to disturb or affect the possession of property in the custody of a state court, it may exercise its jurisdiction to adjudicate rights in such property where the final judgment does not undertake to interfere with the state court‘s possession save to the extent that the state court is bound by the judgment to recognize the right adjudicated by the federal court.” Markham v. Allen, 326 U.S. 490, 494, 66 S.Ct. 296, 90 L.Ed. 256 (1946) (citations omitted). Unlike in Markham, in which the federal court simply declared the plaintiff was entitled to share in the estate in dispute, the Plaintiff in this case is seeking not simply a declaration of entitlement to funds from the testamentary trust, but rather a court order compelling payment to the extent he is found to be so entitled. Thus, while Plaintiff‘s first claim seeks only to compel Defendant Edelman to perform his purported
With respect to the first claim, that Defendants breached a fiduciary duty to Plaintiff in failing to investigate his claim, we affirm the District Court‘s dismissal under
As an initial matter, we agree with the district court that Massachusetts law applies to the construction of the will at issue in this case. Sitting in diversity, we apply the choice-of-law rules of the forum state, here New York. Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Elec. Mfg. Co., 313 U.S. 487, 496–97, 61 S.Ct. 1020, 85 L.Ed. 1477 (1941). Under New York law, “[i]nterpretation of a testamentary disposition of personal property shall be made in accordance with the local law of the jurisdiction in which the testator was domiciled at the time the will was executed.”
As the district court noted, under Massachusetts law applicable to wills executed before 1987, terms like “children” were presumed to include only marital children to the exclusion of any non-marital children. Powers, 506 N.E.2d at 844. Even with that presumption, however, “[i]t is fundamental that a trust instrument must be construed to give effect to the intention of the donor as ascertained from the language of the whole instrument considered in the light of circumstances known to the donor at the time of its execution.” Id. at 843 (quoting Groden v. Kelley, 382 Mass. 333, 415 N.E.2d 850 (1981)). However, in seeking to establish that intention, Plaintiff alleges only that President Kennedy used variants of “child” rather than “issue” in describing the class gift to his children, that he never used a more specific phrase to limit the class gift to children of his marriage, 18
We have considered Kennedy‘s other arguments on appeal and find that they are without 9 merit or moot. For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is hereby AFFIRMED.