Scaife will challenge settled; daughter to receive family memorabilia

The daughter of late Tribune-Review publisher Richard Mellon Scaife has agreed to accept family memorabilia to settle a lawsuit challenging her father's will.

Common Pleas Judge Richard E. McCormick Jr. on Wednesday signed the agreement ending the challenge of Scaife's will by his daughter, Jennie Scaife.

Jennie Scaife, 54, of Palm Beach, Fla., sought to invalidate the will, claiming her father's lawyer used undue influence to exclude her from the final version of the document completed before his death in 2014.

Terms of the settlement call for Jennie Scaife to receive no money from the estate, but she will take possession of pictures, jewelry and other items considered to be family memorabilia.

She will receive more than 160 items, including cuff links, plaques, a silver Tiffany and Co.-engraved pen, a childhood teddy bear, boxed medallions, a signed Bart Simpson cartoon personalized to her father, books, photographs and other family remembrances.

The settlement calls for Jennie Scaife to donate 41 items — such as diaries, books and other family writings — to the Allegheny Foundation.

“The last will that we believe to be valid provided family memorabilia to Jennie Scaife. We have reached a settlement to provide those items to Jennie Scaife,” said her lawyer, Peter St. Tienne Wolff. “We are pleased with the resolution.”

Trent Echard, attorney for the estate, said, “The settlement resolves the litigation, and the executors for the estate deny the allegations of wrongdoing that have been made in this case.”

In a separate lawsuit, an Allegheny County judge this week ruled that the Scaife children — Jennie and David — are not entitled to seek punitive damages against the overseers of a trust fund held by their late father.

The children contend in the lawsuit that a trust fund established in 1935 by their grandmother, Sarah Mellon Scaife, for the benefit of Richard Mellon Scaife, was improperly drained of hundreds of millions of dollars to leave them nothing as remainder beneficiaries.

Last year, they filed to seek a claim for damages against trustees H. Yale Gutnick, James M. Walton and PNC Bank.

Common Pleas Judge Kathleen A. Durkin denied the request in a one-page opinion, citing a 1980 Pennsylvania Supreme Court case.

“... Five judges from this court held that punitive damages for losses due to the mismanagement of a trust are not a viable remedy in Orphans Court.”

The bulk of Scaife's estate was bequeathed to the Allegheny Foundation, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art and Brandywine Conservancy.