Scaife children can see details of three family trusts, judge rules

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The daughter and son of the late billionaire publisher Richard Mellon Scaife can review documents related to three family trusts in their ongoing legal fight with a trio of trustees, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kathleen Durkin ruled in a decision late Friday.

Jennie Scaife, 54, of Florida, and David Scaife, 52, of Shadyside, want to see the details of three trusts in order to flesh out their allegation that their father largely spared those funds, while spending down a trust they would otherwise have inherited as he propped up his Trib Total Media properties. Trustees H. Yale Gutnick, the former chairman of Trib Total Media, and PNC Bank had not fulfilled the siblings’ requests for documents on the trusts.

Judge Durkin ruled that those trusts “may be relevant in this matter or lead to relevant information,” so the trustees must produce the documents.

The judge did not make a final ruling on two other discovery disputes, saying she wanted to review communications between David Scaife and his former attorneys before deciding whether Mr. Gutnick can have them, and putting on hold the siblings’ request for communications between the trustees and their attorneys until the Superior Court decides a separate case involving similar issues.

David Scaife and Jennie Scaife contend that Mr. Gutnick, PNC and third trustee James Walton should not have allowed the publisher to drain some $400 million, over 20 years, from a fund created in 1935 from which they would have inherited any balance.

The bulk of the fund went to support the Trib properties, and when Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, it was empty.