Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and representatives of a trust tied to the late industrialist Alfred I. duPont have gone to the Florida Supreme Court in a battle about whether Delaware — duPont’s native state — has been shortchanged in the distribution of money.
A panel of the 5th District Court of Appeal on May 31 ruled that Delaware Attorney General Kathleen Jennings can pursue a lawsuit alleging a 50 percent limit on distribution of money to states other than Delaware had been breached.
The appellate ruling was part of decades of legal wrangling about a duPont charitable trust and the nonprofit Nemours Foundation, which was created with money from the trust and provides pediatric medical care in Florida and other states.
DuPont moved to Jacksonville in the 1920s, and the trust and the Nemours Foundation were established in Florida.
But the May 31 appeals court opinion said “Mr. duPont included in his will and in the trust documents specific, clear direction that the children and elderly of Delaware were to receive priority and were to be taken care of before expending trust funds on children or elderly residing elsewhere.”
In addition, a lawsuit filed in the late 1970s led to a settlement that limited how much of the trust money distributed each year to Nemours could be spent outside Delaware. That limit was 50 percent.
Then-Delaware Attorney General Matthew Denn filed a lawsuit in 2017 against the trust and the Nemours Foundation, alleging breach of contract and breach of trust duties.
Florida intervened in the case on the side of the trust and the foundation.
Separate circuit court rulings dismissed the breach-of-contract claim and granted summary judgment to the trust and foundation on the breach-of-trust claim. But the appeals court panel overturned those rulings.
Moody’s office and lawyers for the trustees filed separate notices Thursday of taking the dispute to the Supreme Court.
As is common, the notices do not provide detailed arguments.
