St. Mary's Medical Center, Inc. v. McCarthy

Cornelia Haney's will left trust funds to St. Mary's Medical Center (defendant) to build a memorial, with a committee to decide its specific form; the committee chose to build a chapel, completed in 1956. Decades later, St. Mary's needed the land to expand its facilities and planned to raze the chapel; Vincent McCarthy (plaintiff), a distant Haney relative and grandson of a committee member, sued to stop the demolition, arguing the will created an ongoing charitable trust under which St. Mary's held the chapel itself in trust for public use. The trial court agreed and permanently enjoined demolition; St. Mary's appealed.