For decades, Major League Baseball contracts contained a standard "reserve clause" that gave team owners exclusive rights to a player until he was traded or released. In 1969, St. Louis Cardinals centerfielder Curt Flood challenged the status quo when he refused to report to the Philadelphia Phillies after a trade. Flood's stand, along with a subsequent arbitration determination declaring the reserve clause was incompatible with the economic freedoms of modern society, led to the adoption of free agency as we know it today in the professional sports world.
In the world of personal trust administration, with billions of dollars held in Pennsylvania trusts, a similar fight over free agency has been playing out in Pennsylvania's courts. At stake is trust "portability" — the ability of trust beneficiaries to remove a trustee where the trust document does not provide an express mechanism for removal. Trust beneficiaries saddled with unresponsive corporate trustees, high fees or concerns with the quality of trust administration services faced a difficult challenge. While trust instruments drafted in recent years are likely to contain express portability provisions, many older trust instruments are silent on this issue, leaving judicial intervention as the last resort to remove a recalcitrant trustee.
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