King ex rel. Anderson v. Conant

20 Mass. L. Rptr. 223
CourtMassachusetts Superior Court
DecidedNovember 14, 2005
DocketNo. 032012BLS
StatusPublished

This text of 20 Mass. L. Rptr. 223 (King ex rel. Anderson v. Conant) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Superior Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
King ex rel. Anderson v. Conant, 20 Mass. L. Rptr. 223 (Mass. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinion

van Gestel, Allan, J.

All counts of the Second Amended Complaint,3 all counterclaims and all third-party claims between and among the various parties now have been resolved by settlement, summary judgment or other dispositive motion, waiver or trial by jury, except for Count VII (unjust enrichment), Count VIII (declaratory judgment), Count IX (breach of fiduciary duty), and CountXII (violation of G.L.c. 93A, sec. 9) running against the defendant Robert E. Sayre (“Sayre”). What follows here are the Court’s findings of fact, rulings of law and an order for judgment on the remaining counts.

FINDINGS OF FACT

Sayre is a psychologist, first licensed in Massachusetts in 1973, who, at various times, treated Hilda Ayer Anderson (“Mrs. Anderson”). Also, at various times, Sayre was employed by the Ayer-Anderson Foundation, Inc. (the “Foundation”).

Mrs. Anderson is a wealthy woman. She is nearly— indeed, by now may be — 80 years old.

Sayre first met Mrs. Anderson in 1985. She was referred to him by Dr. George Arroll, who was then one of Mrs. Anderson’s psychiatrists. At that time, Sayre began treating Mrs. Anderson and her then husband, Harry Curtis, principally through marriage counseling.

From Mrs. Anderson’s psychiatrists, Dr. Arroll and a Dr. Jeffrey M. Hoffman, Sayre learned that she was thought to have a personality disorder, an anxiety disorder and problems with alcohol. The personality disorder was defined by Sayre as “a person with a very fragile self-concept; a person who may have severe mood swings; a person who values and devalues relationships to an extreme; a person who, under extreme stress, has difficulties basically holding themselves together.” Sayre reported that Mrs. Anderson “had great problems with . . . mood issues. She had difficulty tolerating stress. She had intense emotional responses to things. Her self-concept was very poor. Those are the primaiy issues that she exhibited.”

Sayre learned from Dr. Arroll that Mrs. Anderson had had several psychiatric hospitalizations in the past. Most of those hospitalizations had been brought on by complications from abuse of alcohol and its effect on her mental state. Mrs. Anderson told Sayre that she had had electric shock therapy.

Sayre also reported that Mrs. Anderson had an anxiety disorder, meaning: “An individual who has a general sense of foreboding; basically, is having a fear response without an object or event that would normally cause that fear; basically, it’s a flight-type of feeling; and it generalizes to daily events.” “She would become intensely anxious. She would get angry. She would want . . . people close by her.” This made her “more demanding of others.”

From some time in 1986 through 1991, Sayre primarily treated Mrs. Anderson for alcoholism. “She was drinking intensely at periods. It was a progressive problem. It made her more intense. It made her more violent.” When she was intoxicated, she “had difficulties with normal cognitive processes.”

[224]*224During the period from 1986 to 1991, Sayre also diagnosed Mrs. Anderson with depression. He called it “major depression, recurrent.” She “was having hopelessness, helplessness. She was — became intensely irritable. She was having difficulties getting along with her husband.”

In addition to the foregoing, Sayre determined that Mrs. Anderson had an eating disorder called anorexia.

Prior to a 1989 admission to Baldpate Hospital for her alcohol problem, Sayre was in contact with her almost every day. When she was released from Bald-pate on October 26, 1989, she did not require as much attention from Sayre. Eventually, in 1991, at Mrs. Anderson’s request, Sayre stopped seeing her.

In 1994 Sayre once again began treating Mrs. Anderson. His treatment of her increased progressively. During this period she “had alcohol dependence in remission. She had continuing anxiety. She had continued depression, and she had continued eating problems. She had continued exacerbated problems in her marriage, and she continued to have difficulties in terms of her relationships with her family.” Sayre’s previous diagnoses did not change, and he did not reach any new diagnoses. Also, during this time Mrs. Anderson divorced Harry Curtis.

Because of Mrs. Anderson’s demands on his time, and at the urging of Mrs. Anderson and her attorney, Jon F. Conant (“Conant”), Sayre stopped working at Salem Hospital and accepted a position as “on-site supervisor” at the Foundation. This enabled him to be available to her at all times. The Foundation was within a short walking distance from Mrs. Anderson’s home near Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester. His position at the Foundation was to supervise the staff, to greet people, to socialize with Mrs. Anderson when she came by, to try to establish programs and basically to do her bidding in terms of establishing the Foundation the way that she wanted it to be run.

The Foundation was a veiy important, perhaps critical, factor in Mrs. Anderson’s life generally, and her sobriety and mental stability particularly.

Sayre continued as Mrs. Anderson’s psychologist from 1994 until he was terminated by her in early 2003. Sayre agreed to charge Mrs. Anderson an hourly rate of $150 for his personal treatments to her. During this period he also was paid $750 per week by the Foundation, from which he also received other benefits.

The nature of Sayre’s treatments of Mrs. Anderson after he resumed them in 1994 was different from that in the period before her Baldpate Hospital admission in 1989. By 1994 she had been successful in keeping her alcohol problem under control. Thus, as she began to involve herself more intensely with the Foundation, much of Sayre’s work became more focused on assisting her with interpersonal relationships with her staff and employees and with her own self-esteem. He described it more like coaching than psychotherapy. However it was characterized, Sayre was acting in a psychologist/patient relationship with Mrs. Anderson, and he agreed with her to do so at a rate of $150 per hour.

During the entire time that Sayre treated Mrs. Anderson, both before and after the Baldpate Hospital admission, she was represented by attorney Jon Conant. In fact, in addition to acting as Mrs. Anderson’s attorney, Conant had a broadly worded durable power of attorney from her enabling him to freely handle her money.

Although not a causative factor in the claims against Sayre, Mrs. Anderson’s relationship and situation with Conant warrants comment.

In the principal portion of this case, Conant was charged by Mrs. Anderson with a number of acts of legal malpractice and breaches of fiduciary duly in connection with his mishandling and mismanagement of her funds. Conant himself admitted his failure to properly account for Mrs. Anderson’s funds. He maintained no ledger or other accounting of the transactions involving her funds commingled with others in his IOLTA account, or of the checks he wrote to himself. Further, he maintained no effective billing records. In his Amended Answer to Interrogatoiy No. 1, Conant stated, among other things: “He did not maintain detailed descriptions recording the nature of services rendered, nor did he create invoices for the services rendered after the first year or two because compensation was generally reviewed on an annual basis.” When asked for an accounting in this proceeding, Conant simply handed the plaintiffs a mass of documents and suggested they should do it themselves.

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Bluebook (online)
20 Mass. L. Rptr. 223, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/king-ex-rel-anderson-v-conant-masssuperct-2005.