66 N.Y.S. 260 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1900
This action is brought on the part of the plaintiff to recover of the defendant, Edith M. K. Wetmore, the younger, as sole executrix under the will of Henry Keteltas, the last surviving trustee of the estate of John Gardner, deceased, an undivided one-seventh part of the sum of $230,040.36, received by said Henry Keteltas, as trustee, on the 4th of May, 1854. John Gardner died in December, 1817, leaving a last will and testament, in which certain trusts were created for the benefit of his children. The trust for his daughter Malvina, who afterwards married Eugene Keteltas, is the trust involved in this action, and terminated upon her death, June 20, 1894. Prior to the termination of this trust Henry Keteltas, son of Malvina Keteltas, had been substituted as trustee, and at the time of the transactions under consideration was sole trustee of the trust for his mother. Prior to 1892 the city of Hew York instituted proceedings to acquire, for purposes of a public park, certain real estate which formed part of the trust estate; and on May 5, 1894, Henry Keteltas, as trustee, received an award for property taken, amounting to the sum of $230,040.36. It is claimed that a large portion of the award was applied by the trustee to the construction of buildings upon vacant lots in the city of New York. These lots had formerly been improved; but the buildings were ancient, and generally of frame construction, in some instances with brick sides or fronts. Many of them were ordered down by the building department as being unsafe and incapable of further repair, and all of them were substantially, if not entirely, in an untenantable condition. The trust term had been in existence nearly sixty years, and these buildings, some of them, were said to have been over one hundred years old, and others fifty years old. This case first came on for trial before Mr. Justice Werner. After the trial was concluded and the case submitted for decision, the justice was appointed a judge of the Court
Ordered accordingly.