A private settlement reached recently in the case Benson v. Rosenthal is expected to allow Tom Benson to substitute cash and promissory notes for much of the non-voting New Orleans Saints and Pelicans shares in the assets he has assigned to Renee, Rita, and Ryan LeBlanc.
The settlement, announced June 17, hinges on both the NFL and NBA approving the alteration and essentially allowing Benson to use the teams as loan collateral. But even with that approval, the future of the NFL and NBA franchises is far from clear.
The controlling shares in both franchises will be assigned to an heir by Benson in his will. The real battle for the Saints and Pelicans will occur after his death, when that will — which designated Rita LeBlanc as the trustee of the franchises until it was changed in late 2014 — is likely to be challenged by LeBlanc and her mother and brother contending as grounds mental incapacity for Benson and an undue influence over the inheritance process exerted by his wife, Gayle.
In addition, Rita LeBlanc is involved in or affected by two other legal actions against her grandfather. One of them, regarding the trusteeship of assets held by Benson’s late first wife, Shirley, in Bexar County court in San Antonio, was settled earlier this year. Details of the agreement have not been made public, but Renee Benson has replaced Tom Benson as the trustee of a fund holding interests in Texas investments, including car dealerships, a bank and assorted real estate. That has given the LeBlancs the right to run those assets on behalf of the trust.
In an interdiction lawsuit, the LeBlanc siblings and their mother contended that Benson was unfit to make decisions about his affairs, including those regarding the irrevocable trust. They asked for the court to appoint a guardian to manage it on his behalf. That was decided in Benson’s favor earlier this year. However, another interdiction attempt, based in part on the contents of the deposition that Benson gave in a preliminary phase of Benson v. Rosenthal — comments deemed rambling and at times factually incorrect — may still occur.
