ST. LOUIS (CN) — Attorneys for UMB Bank attempted to revive the bank’s RICO case in the Eighth Circuit on Wednesday morning against the heirs of artist Thomas Hart Benton, a well-known Missouri painter.
UMB Bank attorney Todd Ruskamp, of Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Kansas City, Missouri, told the three-judge panel that the consequences of the ruling are significant to the banking industry, which relies on the credibility of its members.
“What I mean by that, is that certainly the district court's ruling could be read or interpreted reasonably to suggest that a RICO enterprise may manufacture false evidence, publicize that false evidence on a national basis about a financial institution, knowing all along that the information that it's publicizing is false,” Ruskamp said during the 30-minute hearing. “Those are the allegations in the complaint.”
In 2021, UMB sued Jessie Benton and her three children, Anthony Gude, Daria Lyman, and Cybele McCormick, for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in the Western District of Missouri.
UMB served as Hart Benton’s testamentary trust, but it claims that in 2014 the defendants began conspiring to remove UMB as trustee by making a series of false accusations in public and in the court. Their actions forced UMB to resign as trustee.
Andrew Schermerhorn, who represented the Benton heirs, pushed back on that notion.
“UMB Bank, I don't suspect, nor any other bank, will ever part with its money simply because...
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