The daughter of a late billionaire tycoon has been branded ‘entitled’ by a judge who rejected her demands for a $228 million slice of her estranged family’s fortune.
Serene Warren, 55, was awarded ‘just’ $41 million by Judge Edward Wahl in Minneapolis last week, and ordered to pay her own costs.
The ruling ended a five year battle which Wahl condemned as a ‘tragic litigation,’ and which saw Warren estranged from her late dad Ken Evenstad brother Mark Evenstad, who is her only sibling.
Ken came from humble roots, trained as a pharmacist and made his fortune after buying pharma firm Upsher-Smith for $1,500 in 1969.
The firm was taken to even greater heights by Ken’s son Mark – Serene’s brother – after he was made CEO in 2004.
He quadrupled the firm’s value to $1.1 billion by the time it was sold in 2017, but Serene – who’s been a stay-at-home mom since 1994, lashed out after her brother was financially rewarded for his hard work.
Serene Warren is pictured with her late dad Ken Evenstad in an undated photo. She’s just lost her bid to claim $228 million of her family’s fortune, after a Minneapolis judge ruled that she’d done nothing to deserve it
Serene’s brother Mark, pictured, helped quadruple the size of family pharma firm Upsher-Smith so that it was sold for $1.1 billion in 2017, but Serene moaned when he was handed an extra 1.5 per cent of stock, despite being a stay-at-home mom since 1994
Mark Evenstad is pictured at the vineyard his late dad named after his estranged sister Serene, who has just lost her bid to claim a huge slice of the fortune he helped generate
She did so despite receiving more than $328 million over the course of her life from her father, who died in 2020, and her mother Grace.
The drama began after Ken decided to award Mark an extra 1.5 per cent of stock in 2014 as a reward for the firm’s exploding success.
Warren felt it was unfair that her brother was given the additional stock, and the bad blood continued, even as their father battled terminal illness.
In 2016, she cut off all communications with her family.
In 2017, she demanded that the family firm be sold as a path toward her own ‘financial independence.’
She owned 25 per cent of the firm at the time, worth around a quarter of a billion dollars.
In 2018, Warren sued her family over $75 million in bonuses paid to Ken and Mark Evenstad, arguing they unfairly reduced the value of the company and thus her stake.
An independent auditor found that the bonuses were fair, and indeed Ken and his son were underpaid over many years, given the impact they had had on the formerly minor pharmaceutical company.
Judge Edward Wahl, presiding over the court in Hennepin County, said it was painful that Warren had chosen ‘this tragic litigation’ instead of accepting a settlement offered years ago, which would have seen her walk away with $150 million.
Warren has been a stay-at-home mother since 1994, and her husband, Chris, 56, has not had a job since 2004.
The pair live in a breathtaking $3 million five bed, five bathroom mansion that sits on Lake Minnetonka.
Yet Wahl said Warren developed a sense of ‘entitlement’ about what she thought her parents owed her, according to the ruling obtained by The Star Tribune.
Wahl hailed ‘the generosity of (Warren’s) parents.’
Ken was so once so devoted to his daughter he even named his celebrated Oregon vineyard named after her – Domaine Serene, a popular tourist destination in the Willamette Valley.
Serene and husband Chris live in this $3.0m mansion in Minnesota. Chris hasn’t worked since 2004
Serene and Ken are pictured at Domaine Serene – the celebrated Oregon winery he named in his daughter’s honor
Ken is pictured with his wife Grace at their Domaine Serene vineyard in Oregon. It was named after their daughter, who was estranged from both parents at the time of her father’s death in 2020
Wahl said it was sad that the family row had to be aired in public.
‘The tragedy of this case is now compounded by the duty the court has to explain its decision in detail in a public forum,’ said Wahl.
‘The court takes no satisfaction in having to lay out in this detailed fashion what likely would have been better for all the principal players had it been resolved by private negotiation.’
Judge Wahl, in his ruling, said that Warren was in no position to evaluate how her father and brother were running the company.
He said Ken and his wife Grace, with Mark, all ‘exemplify the characteristics of many successful, driven corporate executives’ who work hard and accumulate the kind of knowledge that helps them make ‘tough business decisions.’
Serene Warren tried to stake a large claim on her family’s pharmaceutical firm Upsher-Smith – but Judge Ken Wahl ruled that she’d done nothing to bolster the family’s finances, and was not entitled to the sum she sought
He added: ‘Serene and Chris, on the other hand, chose a different path.
‘As a consequence of their life choices, Serene did not have the business experience and related skills and knowledge that Ken, Grace and Mark possessed when decision times critical to this litigation arose between 2016 and 2019.’
The judge said he could see why some decisions ‘rankled’, but failed to find that she had been defrauded.
Ken Everstad died in 2020, aged 77.
Wahl said the case was sad, but reflected the choices that Warren had made.
‘If Serene is disappointed that she may not wind up with a substantial inheritance on top of her hundreds of millions in shareholder distributions, she made decisions over the past six years that have consequences,’ he said.
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