More on the Bishop Estate

Earlier on this blog, I discussed a book authored by Samuel P. King (Judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Hawai’i) and Randall W. Roth (professor, University of Hawai’i School of Law) which presents an extremely well-researched and highly interesting (and shocking) account of the problems arising from the Bishop Estate in Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement & Political Manipulation of American’s Largest Charitable Trust (2006).

In Erosion of Trust, ABA J., Aug. 2007, at 48, these authors update readers on some of the developments that have since occurred.  They note that:

The fact that it took the heavy hand of the IRS to finally break the legal logjam in the Bishop Estate scandal has not been lost on members of Congress and state legislators in their consideration of proposed measures to better protect charities from insider abuse.

The authors then discuss actions taken (or considered) by several states such as California, Massachusetts, and New York.

They conclude that “lawyers must take their duties seriously when representing nonprofits.  The legal profession can and should assist in efforts to make it harder to abuse the trust that the public places in charities and in the people who run them.”