Sheel Seidler, widow of late Padres owner, sues in-laws for control of team
Late San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler’s wife, Sheel Seidler, sued brothers-in-law Matthew and Robert on Monday in an effort to prevent another brother, John, from taking control of the team in their place.
The lawsuit comes at a time when the Padres are among the teams recruiting Japanese pitcher Rōki Sasaki.
In a petition filed in the Travis County Probate Court in Austin, Texas, Sheel Seidler sued Matthew, who became executor of Peter Seidler’s estate last year, and Robert, the former executor. She alleged fiduciary breach of trust, fraud, conversion and blatant acts of self-dealing.
The petition accused Robert’s wife Alecia of making “multiple racist, profane and hateful messages directed at Sheel – a woman of Indian descent.”
“Defendants’ actions to wrest control of the Padres were taken to force Sheel – a woman, an interloper, and an Indian-American woman not of O’Malley descent – out of what Bob and Matt saw as their family business and ancestral right,” the spokesperson said. petition alleged.
Sheel asked that Matthew be banned from acting on behalf of the Seidler trusts and removed as trustee. She asked the court to invalidate any actions to appoint anyone other than Sheel as controller of the Padres.
“I made this decision as a very last resort, but I am confident it is the right one and the best way to protect the Padres franchise and ensure that the vision Peter and I shared for the team will continue,” Sheel said in a statement. .
The Peter Seidler Trust issued a statement calling the lawsuit “completely baseless.”
“Peter had a clear estate plan,” the statement said. “The plan specifically named three of his nine siblings, with whom he had worked closely for decades, as successors to his trust and Peter himself prohibited Sheel from ever serving as trustee.”
Peter Seidler, a grandson of late Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, was an investor in the group that acquired the Padres in 2012. He replaced Ron Fowler as the team’s control person on November 18, 2020, and died on November 14 at the age of 63. 2023. Three days later, the team appointed Eric Kutsenda, a business partner of Peter Seidler, as interim controller.
San Diego said on Dec. 21 that John will become the controller, a move that Major League Baseball owners have not yet approved.
“Matt has attempted to silence Sheel by threatening her if she were to make public her opposition to John’s unwarranted appointment as controller,” the petition said.
San Diego, which has never won a World Series title, has cut its major league player payroll from a team-record $257 million in 2023 to $166 million at the start of the 2024 season.
“The emphasis in the press releases on cutting the Padres’ salaries, lowering their expectations and implicitly abandoning their overall pursuit of a World Series championship would have been a blow to Peter,” the petition said.
The petition included a piece of paper purportedly in Peter Seidler’s handwriting, showing Sheel, followed by their children, as his preferred future audit subject. The petition quotes Matthew telling Sheel in a letter last October 15 that she “lacks the experience, skills and financial acumen necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of this important role.”
“Rather than appoint Sheel as Padres Control Person – in accordance with Peter’s known preference and as the person whose interests best align with the Seidler Trusts – Defendants seek to force the appointment of their brother John as Padres Control Person,” the petition said. .
“By doing so, they place control of the substantial interests of the Padres and the Seidler Trusts in the hands of a third party and enjoy the appearance and benefits of being principal owners. Meanwhile, defendants froze Sheel out of the Padres organization, depriving her of the benefits of being the baseball team’s majority beneficial owner while enjoying those benefits themselves.
The declaration of trust stated that “the Trustee is exclusively responsible for appointing the next Control Person of the San Diego Padres” and added: “In 2020, in connection with Peter’s appointment as Control Person, Sheel agreed in a sworn document that it had no right to appoint the control person and that it would not interfere with the designated control person.”
She accused Matthew and Robert of attempting to sell the trust’s interests in Seidler Kutsenda Management Co at below market value and then withdrawing the sale when the attempt became known.
“Alecia made it clear that Sheel was an outsider unworthy of being part of the Seidler family and that she was foolish to believe that the Seidler family would ever act in her best interests,” the petition alleged.
The petition also states that Robert and Matthew “have made it clear that Sheel and her children are not welcome in the owners box at Padres Stadium, Petco Park.”
MLB declined comment.