A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge on Thursday entered a $1.266 million settlement order in the long-running legal battle over alleged misdealing involving the Mable Amos Trust—a case that has dragged on for four years and put top government officials at odds.
The settlement figure would become a final order in the case if the fiduciaries for the trust—Regions Bank, John Bell, Drew McNees and Thomas Albritton, who also serves as executive director of the state’s Ethics Commission—agree to the terms. That $1.266 million figure would restore funds to the trust and provide payment for litigation fees, according to an order from Judge Greg Griffin.
“The Court is of the opinion that a restitution to the Trust by the Trust fiduciaries in the amount of $1,266,910 would be a reasonable sum of money to make the Trust whole,” Griffin wrote in his order.
Griffin also made it clear that fees charged by Regions Bank for administering the trust—a key matter in the initial lawsuit—were fair and reasonable. His order allows Regions to continue administering the trust under the newly appointed board.
Griffin also found that the trust’s former board members—Albritton, Bell and McNees—owed money for self-dealing by awarding scholarships to family members and the children of employees at their law firm. Griffin’s order places the total amount for “personal inurement and self dealing” at $257,844.
The trust was originally established by Amos, a former Alabama secretary of state, to award relatively meager scholarships to deserving Alabama students. However, after the discovery of oil on trust land, the amount of money available increased significantly, as did the fees for managing it and the scholarship amounts.
Board members for the trust were found to have awarded scholarships to their family members—two of Albritton’s children received scholarships to attend the University of Texas—as well as family members of employees and of a local judge. Albritton and the board members have denied acting unethically, saying that nothing in the bylaws prevented their family members from receiving the scholarships.
The matter also drew in Attorney General Steve Marshall, who insisted that his office should enforce the trust’s bylaws. Marshall repeatedly challenged Griffin’s orders in the case and entered his own settlement proposal—a proposal that fell apart once Griffin’s auditor showed that it significantly undercounted the amount of money owed to the trust.
While Marshall’s office went after Albritton and the trust board members, they hit back at Marshall, saying that he had a conflict of interest in the case because of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from Regions Bank.
