Even if the Winter children won in the Supreme Court, I think the amount awarded would be a fraction of the millions that BS had already given them, which they had to pay back. I hope the Winter family has a pro bono agreement with their lawyers, although that doesn't help in having to pay BS's legal fees of $300,000, nor the appeal from his grave for an additional $700,000 in fees.
BS built his company up to 11,000 employees world wide and became a multi-billionaire in the generic pharmaceutical business. KW's father may have been successful in own right, but BS (as lead scientist) was a genius in finding the formula in patented drugs, and reverse engineering the formulations so that he could generically reproduce them. His genius, and business decisions and practises are the reason for his success, and do not equate to what his uncle's success may have been had he lived. If the Supreme Court decides that BS had an ad hoc fiduciary duty, I feel that the one billion dollar claim will be reduced to peanuts. Personally, I think Royal Trust were negligent as trustees., and it angers me that they got off scott free.
In hugely different circumstances, I am reminded of Tim Horton's widow who was bought out by Tim's 50% partner a year after his 1974 death. The company was valued by an independent appraiser for $1.7 million. She rejected the 50% offer of $850,000 so Tim's partner Ron Joyce paid her $1,000,000 even though it put him in financial jeopardy. Joyce went on and built up the company to extraordinary growth and success in the following eighteen years. Seeing Joyce's success, Mrs. Horton sued for $10,000,000, saying she wasn't paid enough for her share. She lost the suit. The similarity between the two cases imo, is people thinking that they should be entitled to huge profits of a wildly successful former family business, sold at market value, many years before. Mrs. Horton had her claims for her law suit, which were rejected by the court, and the Winters had their claims,which have been rejected by the court.