Carlos McClatchy, son of James B. McClatchy, is filing suit against the McClatchy Company alleging that trustees and the company’s former chairman mishandled trust assets when they purchased Knight Ridder, another newspaper company, for $4.4 billion. Carlos McClatchy, a beneficiary of the trust, is arguing that the purchase led to a decline in McClatchy’s common stock value, which in turn led to a cessation of dividend payments. John Poulos, an attorney representing the McClatchy Company, retorted that Carlos’s argument overlooks the fact that “that there was this thing called a financial crisis” occurring at the time and “other newspaper companies were suspending dividends.”
See Mark Glover, San Francisco Trial Weighs Breach-of-Trust Claim by McClatchy Family Member, The Sacramento Bee, September 13, 2017.
Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.
