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BROKEN TRUST* * Samuel P. King and Randall W. Roth, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2006 Ronald D. Aucutt** Broken Trust, written by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Samuel P. King and University of Hawai'i School of Law Professor Randall W. Roth, tells the story of the legacy of Hawaiian Princess Pauahi, the greatgranddaughter of Kamehameha the Great. It is the story of Kamehameha Schools, which the Princess's will directed her trustees to establish and operate. It also tells the story of the Bishop Estate. The Bishop Estate received its name because the Princess died in 1884 as Bernice Pauahi Bishop and long-term testamentary trusts have been called "estates" in Hawai'i since the days of the Kingdom.
As a mere story, even if it were fiction, the book would be fascinating reading. Beginning with a sensitive portrait of the cultural and political setting for the Princess's life and the formation of her values and vision, the book combines the lure of the Islands with the intrigue of a whodunit to draw the reader inescapably into the drama. Like readers of any good novel, we join the plot vicariously, we picture the action, we pick heroes and cheer, and we identify villains and hiss. We turn page after page.
But the book is not a mere story. It proves the axioms about fiction that truth is stranger still and that there are some things even the most creative novelist could not make up. The book's subtitle is "Greed, Mismanagement & Political Manipulation at America's Largest Charitable Trust"-seemingly audacious to one who picks up the book for the first time, but if anything, seen as understated by the reader who plunges into the narrative. The events exposed in the book are real. They not only could happen, they somehow did happen, which is bound to get the attention and sharpen the focus of any reader, especially a professional whose practice has anything to do with tax-exempt organizations and charitable giving.
In 1995, the Wall Street Journal called the Bishop Estate the nation's wealthiest charity with an endowment estimated to be $10 billion-greater than the endowments of Harvard and Yale combined. Yet, as the book documents, the oversight of the Bishop Estate by its five trustees had...