Angelos’ sons interact in lawful battle around legislation company, Orioles management
A bitter struggle concerning brothers more than the foreseeable future of their storied and ailing father’s Baltimore law business will be waged in a Baltimore County courtroom as Louis Angelos filed accommodate Thursday against John Angelos looking for a judicial purchase that he not interfere with The Legislation Workplaces of Peter G. Angelos Laptop.
In the grievance, Louis also alleges that John has wrongfully assumed unilateral handle above the Baltimore Orioles, which Peter Angelos owns, and is trying to get a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge’s buy to rein in John.
Louis’ requests for the two courtroom orders are centered on his allegation that John’s steps about the agency and baseball workforce have violated his fiduciary obligations of loyalty, superior religion and sincere as a co-trustee with Louis of their father’s revocable have confidence in.
An aide to John, who is the Orioles main govt officer, claimed Friday that he is not having phone calls but instructed an electronic mail searching for remark on Louis’s lawsuit be despatched to the team’s community relations workplace. The email was not quickly returned Friday.
Louis, an attorney, manages the Angelos firm and hopes to preserve it in operation really should his 92–calendar year-outdated father succumb to his ailment. John, a legislation faculty graduate not accredited to exercise legislation, would like to dismantle the business or have it dissolved, according to the complaint.
Louis, by way of counsel, said that John’s need to shut the business is rooted in his hostility towards their father.
“(F)or a long time John experienced been reminded by Mr. Angelos that his deficiency of specialist standing was an avoidable shortcoming,” Louis attorneys, Jeffrey E. Nusinov and Paul D. Raschke, wrote in the grievance.
“The friction amongst them more than John’s absence of experienced standing was internecine,” the criticism mentioned. “With Mr. Angelos now disabled, John intends to have the ultimate phrase. He has established out to dismantle the legal empire his father constructed. He wishes to extinguish all traces of Mr. Angelos’ achievement as a attorney. The regulation business – the follow which gave John all the pros he has relished – have to go.”
According to the criticism, John “uncompromisingly” wrote Louis that the regulation company was unsustainable and “must be in blend dissolved, spun off to other individuals, or/and purchased.” John afterwards threatened that he would go to their mother and father and have Louis eliminated as a co-trustee of the organization.
“Lou knew that Mr. Angelos did not intend to see his firm impulsively and haphazardly dismantled, with minimal or no regard for customers or employees, and he did not accede to John’s requires,” wrote Nusinov and Raschke, of Nusinov Smith LLP in Baltimore. “The information (from John) was apparent: Either Lou cooperated in John’s dismantlement of Mr. Angelos’ solitary best achievement, or John would push Lou apart and strip him of his legislation follow.”
Angelos, whose regulation firm has earned thousands and thousands of bucks in asbestos-exposure situations since the late 1970s, retired from lively exercise in the summer time of 2018 due to health issues.
The agency is at present embroiled in a authorized malpractice lawsuit submitted last calendar year in Baltimore Metropolis Circuit Court in which previous clientele allege the firm’s failure to well timed file an enforcement motion and fraud assert from an asbestos enterprise and its insurers value the shoppers a multimillion-greenback recovery. The firm denies the allegation.
Concerning the Orioles, Louis referred to as John the team’s self-appointed chairman in the complaint, saying he has sought unilateral manage in violation of his obligations as co-trustee with Louis and their mom, Ga K. Angelos.
For illustration, the grievance alleged, John pretended to assist his mother’s selection that it was in the trust’s best interest to provide the staff after Peter Angelos grew to become unwell.
However, John “has performed every thing in his electric power to stall and ultimately, thwart plans to market the club,” the complaint said.
“He one-handedly torpedoed desire expressed by one hugely credible team of consumers,” the grievance additional. “John intends to sustain complete manage about the Orioles – to control, to market or, if he chooses, to transfer to Tennessee (the place he has a residence and his wife’s vocation) – without having obtaining to respond to to any person.”
The lawsuit is docketed in Baltimore County Circuit Court as Louis F. Angelos v. John P. Angelos et al., No. C-03-CV-22-002262.