Urick

INTRODUCTION

Appellant Dana Urick served as the trustee of her late mother’s trust.1 The trust agreement provided that, for a set period of time, Dana, her brother Willis, and her son Trentyn, would each receive annual interest payments from the trust, after which the remaining principal would be distributed to Phillips Academy Andover (Phillips Academy). The trust also contained a no contest clause. Dana subsequently petitioned to reform the trust to eliminate Willis and potentially Phillips Academy as beneficiaries. This reformation petition was drafted and filed by respondent attorney Kira Masteller of respondent Lewitt, Hackman, Shapiro, Marshall & Harlan (collectively, Lewitt Hackman) in 2016. Willis contested the reformation petition and claimed Dana had triggered the no contest clause by filing it without probable cause. Dana retained new counsel in 2016 to defend against Willis’s claims. In October 2017, Division Five of this court reversed the grant of Dana’s anti-SLAPP motion, finding Willis had made a prima facie showing (a) that the petition had been filed in Dana’s capacity as a beneficiary, thus potentially triggering the no contest clause, and (b) that her petition…