Oh, Henry

 

The South Carolina Supreme Court has given former Attorney General Henry McMaster's reputation- which includes a morals campaign against Cragislist, wasteful intrastate water rights litigation, and the pointless Obamacare suits- another smackdown. On February 27 the court rejected a settlement  McMaster brokered that rewrote the will and charitable trust provisions of the late soul singer James Brown.

The court noted:

In our view, the evidence does not support the finding that the compromise was just and reasonable. The compromise orchestrated by the AG in this case destroys the estate plan Brown had established in favor of an arrangement overseen virtually exclusively by the AG. The result is to take a large portion of Brown's estate that Brown had designated for charity and to turn over these amounts to the family members and purported family members who were, under the plain terms of Brown's will, given either limited devises or excluded.

Even if a good faith controversy had existed, the remedy more appropriately would have been the reformation of the documents to provide for any monies payable, not the total dismemberment of Brown's carefully-crafted estate plan and its resurrection in a form that grossly distorts his intent. We find the compromise proposed here is fundamentally flawed because the entire proposal is based on an unprecedented misdirection of the AG's authority in estate cases. We also believe that a departure from the testator's intent is not reasonably necessary to protect the beneficiaries' interests because any alleged advantage to them occasioned by the avoidance of further litigation, as propounded by the settling parties, is illusory at best.

The court's opinion details the breathtaking over-reach McMaster indulged when his statutory role- if he had to intervene in the case at all- was limited to representing the interests of as-yet unidentified charitable beneficiaries.

That McMaster would pull a stunt like this recalls a low moment from his 1986 US Senate campaign:

Few politicians practiced the art of the political put-down as well as Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings. During a 1986 debate between Hollings and his Republican challenger, Henry McMaster, McMaster inexplicably challenged Hollings, then in his 70s, to take a drug test. "I'll take a drug test," Hollings snapped, "if you'll take an I.Q. test."