## Facts

- Kingsbury Place is a private residential subdivision in St. Louis created under a 1902 trust indenture intended to preserve the area as “desirable” high-class residential property.
- The indenture empowered subdivision trustees to protect the subdivision from “encroachment, trespass, nuisance or injury,” and permitted trustees and lot owners to sue to enforce the covenants.
- Louise Woodruff Johnston owned a substantial residence at 4 Kingsbury Place.
- Johnston’s will directed her executor to have the residence razed, sell the land as a vacant lot, and transfer the sale proceeds to the residuary estate.
- Neighboring owners and subdivision trustees sought to stop demolition, alleging the destruction would reduce neighboring property values, violate the subdivision’s protective scheme, constitute a nuisance-like injury, and offend public policy.
- Evidence showed the house was worth approximately $40,000 as improved property, but demolition and sale of the vacant lot would yield only about $650 net to the estate.
- Kingsbury Place was treated as a city landmark with architectural significance; nearly all lots contained substantial residences.
- The record contained no stated reason for Johnston’s demolition directive.

## Issues

1. Whether a court may refuse to enforce, and enjoin performance of, a testamentary directive requiring destruction of a valuable residence when the act would produce significant economic waste, harm neighboring owners and the character of the subdivision, and provide no discernible benefit.
2. Whether neighboring owners and subdivision trustees have a legally protectable interest sufficient to seek equitable relief to prevent demolition that would injure their property and the subdivision.

## Decision

- The Missouri Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s denial of injunctive relief.
- The court held the will provision directing demolition was contrary to public policy and unenforceable.
- The court directed that an injunction issue preventing the executor from razing the residence.

## Legal Principles

- Testamentary freedom is subject to public-policy limits; a court may declare void a will condition that requires conduct against public policy.
- An owner’s power to destroy property is not absolute; equity may intervene, particularly after death, to prevent purposeless destruction producing clear waste.
- A testamentary direction may be invalid where it causes substantial economic loss to the estate and lacks countervailing private or social benefit.
- Courts may consider spillover harms to others and to the community (including diminished neighboring property values and injury to a protected residential setting) in determining whether destruction is impermissible.
- Parties charged with protecting subdivision interests under recorded instruments, and neighboring owners facing concrete injury, may have standing to seek an injunction against conduct that would injure the subdivision.

## Conclusion

The court enjoined demolition because the will’s destruction directive would squander substantial value, injure neighboring owners and a landmark residential enclave, and served no shown beneficial purpose; the provision was therefore void as against public policy.


Eyerman v. Mercantile Tr. Co., 524 S.W.2d 210 (Mo. Ct. App. 1975)