State senator, relative settle fight over fortune
$35 million agreement reached days before trial set to begin over prime Laredo real estate
LAREDO — A bitter, decade-long family legal fight involving state Sen. Judith Zaffirini and the heirs of sisters who left behind a fortune in Laredo real estate has ended quietly with a $35 million settlement.
The high-profile case involved more than two dozen lawyers and consumed as much as $10 million in legal fees. After months of negotiation, a tentative agreement was reached Wednesday, just days before a trial was set to begin. The settlement, which was signed Saturday, will require Zaffirini and her husband Carlos to deliver roughly $35 million in land and cash to three Alexander family trusts that benefit Zaffirini’s second cousin, Rocio Guerra, and her two children, the sole heirs to the fortune of Delfina and Josefina Alexander.
In exchange, the Zaffirinis will take control of most of 450 acres of undeveloped prime Laredo real estate off Del Mar Boulevard.
“It’s basically a buyout,” said lawyer James McNeel, who represented Raymond De Leon, trustee of the family trusts, who also had sued Zaffirini and others.
Zaffirini, 70, the state’s much-decorated and second-most senior senator, and two other trustees also will relinquish roles they have held over the last decade as executors, trustees, attorneys and directors of the various Alexander legal entities.
The litigation made headlines in 2013 when
two suits were filed against Zaffirini and others. The suits contained accusations of fraud, mismanagement and self-serving conduct by the senator and the other trustees.
The 11th-hour settlement will spare all parties a public airing of the messy family feud that the Laredo legal community has been watching with some anticipation.
Potentially ugly trial
A hint of the nastiness that would have surfaced at trial is found in the defendants’ court pleadings.
“Plaintiffs’ attorneys have embarked on a relentless campaign of leveling multiple scurrilous, vicious and wholly unwarranted accusations at each of the defendants,” Zaffirini and the other defendants said in one pleading.
For Zaffirini, who takes great pride in her public image, from her perfect Senate voting record to the more than 900 honorary awards sometimes noted in her press releases, the outcome means that her character and conduct will not be put at risk in trial.
One of the issues that delayed reaching an agreement was her insistence that the final document contain language absolving her of any criminal wrongdoing, according to plaintiffs lawyers, who eventually acceded.
Although present in court Wednesday, she declined to comment, referring questions to her lawyers. Guerra, also present but seated with her husband far from her betterknown cousin, likewise declined to comment.
The roots of the border family melodrama are buried in the roughly 1,000 acres of brushy ranch land that was acquired by the Alexander family in the 19th century.
The land was eventually handed down to sisters Delfina and Josefina Alexander, well-known philanthropists and businesswomen, who began forming a real estate development plan about 20 years ago. Along the way, they donated some of the land for a fire station and more for J. B. Alexander High School, named for a brother killed in World War II.
Cousins vastly different
As the value of the land increased with Laredo’s growth, the sisters in the 1990s prepared an estate plan that included a limited family partnership, a family trust, and wills naming Josefina’s daughter Rocio Guerra Gonzalez as sole heir.
Rocio’s grandmother and Judith Zaffirini’s grandmother were sisters, making the two women second cousins.
While Zaffirini — a favorite niece of Josefina and Delfina — was highly educated, articulate and accomplished, Rocio struggled, working as a teacher’s aide and later marrying Vidal Guerra, a man prone to problems.
“This case presents the court and jury with a tragic tale of an individual who has intellectual and emotional challenges,” the defendants asserted, claiming that Rocio is being manipulated by her husband and greedy lawyers.
More than a decade ago, serious problems arose after Vidal Guerra was put in charge of developing the Alexander ranch property, now one the most desirable residential areas in Laredo. According to court pleadings filed by the defendants, Vidal secretly took control of the project, and began paying himself extravagantly and taking money without permission.
In a later deposition, Vidal admitted to using a company credit card for large personal expenses, taking large unauthorized commissions, paying his wife unauthorized commissions, transferring company property to his own name, and other financial misdeeds.
After being confronted in 2006 by Carlos Zaffirini, then representing the sisters, Vidal resigned and moved with Rocio and their two young children to San Antonio, beginning an estrangement from the elderly Alexander sisters that never healed.
In short order, in 2006 Rocio Guerra sued her mother Josefina and Aunt Delfina over how the sisters were distributing money to her from the family trust. That suit, the first of the half-dozen to come, was dismissed in district court but lingered until 2012 when all appeals were exhausted.
More lawsuits filed
Three years ago, two more suits were filed, one by Rocio, and a second by De Leon, the trustee, who claimed the Zaffirinis were violating the terms of the trust by starving it of funds. The suits were combined into the single case in Laredo that was apparently resolved this week.
The Zaffirinis will now try to profitably complete the development of the old Alexander Ranch property in Laredo. The Guerra family will stay in San Antonio, supported by the family trust.
As to the likelihood of an eventual reconciliation between cousins Judith Zaffirini and Rocio Guerra, it appears at best uncertain. A statement issued Saturday by Rocio stopped far short of that sentiment.
“My family and I are relieved that after 10 years of being under the Zaffirinis’ control, this ordeal has finally come to an end. In spite of all the hurt, anguish and pain that the Zaffirinis have caused me and my family, I will continue to keep Judith in my prayers.”