In re Lawrence
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
279 F.3d 1294 (2002)
Stephan Jay Lawrence created and funded an offshore asset-protection trust in Mauritius with $7 million shortly before losing a $20.4 million arbitration award; the trust contained a duress provision terminating his beneficiary rights upon filing bankruptcy, but its terms also let Lawrence appoint new trustees who could reinstate him as beneficiary. After Lawrence filed bankruptcy and the bankruptcy court ordered him to turn over the trust assets, he refused, was held in contempt and taken into custody, and appealed, arguing the duress provision made compliance impossible since his beneficiary rights had terminated.
Whether a person may assert impossibility as a defense to a contempt order for non-compliance, when he himself created the circumstances that supposedly make compliance impossible and retains a mechanism to reverse those circumstances.