Family Awarded $750,000 in Suit Against Wells Fargo

A Santa Ana family won a $750,000 award Friday in Orange County Superior Court against Wells Fargo Bank, which a jury found had mishandled a trust.

The jury returned the verdict in favor of 84-year-old Morgan Chapman Sr. and his wife and three children, awarding them $250,000 in damages and $500,000 to punish the bank for wrongdoing.

Roland E. Bye, attorney for the Chapmans, said the judge excluded some evidence of misdeeds by the bank that the jury should have been allowed to hear and said he may file an appeal.

The jury found that bank employees mistakenly sold stock from the Chapman family trust and then tried to conceal the error.

The trust owned 8,000 shares of Conoco Corp. stock, which were supposed to be exchanged for Du Pont Corp. stock when the latter bought out Conoco in 1981.

But a bank clerk mistakenly sold the stock, creating a tax bill in excess of $200,000 for the Chapmans, Bye said.

Bank attorneys argued that Wells Fargo employees quickly tried to correct the mistake by buying Du Pont Corp. stock for $613,000.

“The bank committed an unintentional error, but after that they failed to notify the Chapmans,” Bye said. “They said they took a lot of measures which they claim were corrective. We saw them as a disaster.”