Under the Elder Abuse Act, a defendant who exposes an elder to a foreseeable risk of harm does not escape liability merely because the risk did not materialize.
A California appeals court has revived key claims in a long-running dispute over how Morgan Stanley and a financial adviser managed the fortune of a self-taught investor in the final years of his life, according to a report in the Times of India. The opinion in DeVone v. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, filed on 8 October 2026 and certified for publication on 29 October, held that the family's financial elder abuse claim and parts of its breach-of-fiduciary-duty case should not have been dismissed. The ruling sends the matter back for further proceedings and does not establish that the firm or the adviser committed wrongdoing.
According to the court opinion, Maurice Voce began investing in the 1960s and trading stock options in the 1970s, building a fortune of roughly $19 million while working as a barber. He began with adviser Joseph Privitelli in the 1980s at Dean Witter Reynolds, a firm that later merged with Morgan Stanley. After Joseph Privitelli died in 1993, his son John Privitelli took over the accounts, with Voce then 74, and continued working with him until June 2012, shortly before Voce died in August that year at 93. His Morgan Stanley accounts were valued at about $18 million at his death.
The family's case centred on the final phase of that relationship. Relatives raised concerns about Voce's memory and mental condition from around 2010, and in December that year family members emailed the adviser about memory lapses, disorientation and declining health. According to the appellate opinion, John Privitelli acknowledged in early 2011 that he was aware of concerns about cognitive impairment while continuing to execute trades on Voce's instructions. Asked at trial whether the family's concerns should have been escalated to a supervisor or the firm's risk-management team, he answered: "Sure. It should have been," according to the court's account.
A lower court had dismissed the elder abuse claim on the reasoning that the accounts had increased in value during the relevant period, with the defendants pointing to about $4.2 million in net gains from 2010 to 2012. It also dismissed an excessive-trading theory for lack of sufficient expert evidence. The appeals court rejected the idea that gains alone defeat an elder abuse claim. Under California law, it explained, the question includes whether a defendant knew or should have known that the conduct was likely to harm an older person when it occurred. "Under the Elder Abuse Act, a defendant who exposes an elder to a foreseeable risk of harm does not escape liability merely because the risk did not materialize," the opinion stated. The court upheld the dismissal of the excessive-trading theory.
The ruling also held that questions about whether the adviser's responsibilities extended to tax and estate-planning advice could not be resolved simply by noting he had not been formally hired or paid for those services; the broader relationship and the client's reliance had to be considered. The dispute therefore turns less on how much money Voce made than on what the professionals knew about his circumstances and what duties they owed him. The family first pursued arbitration through FINRA in 2014, where a panel dismissed the claims in January 2019 without prejudice to a court action, which the family filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in April 2019. What remains unresolved is how the surviving claims will fare on the evidence; the appeals ruling settles the legal standards, not the facts.
