Family fight for Padres takes hateful turn with widows lawsuit

The wife of late San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler, Sheel Seidler, sued brothers-in-law Matthew and Robert on Monday, attempting to prevent another brother, John, from taking control of the team rather than her.The suit comes at a time when the Padres are among the teams recruiting Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki.In a petition filed in Travis County Probate Court in Austin, Texas, Sheel Seidler sued Matthew, who became executor of Peter Seidler’s estate last year, and Robert, the prior executor.She claimed fiduciary breaches of trust, fraud, conversion and egregious acts of self-dealing.The petition accused Robert’s wife Alecia of making “multiple racist, profane and hateful communications directed at Sheel — a woman of lndian descent.”“Defendants’ actions to wrest control of the Padres were undertaken to force Sheel — a women, an interloper and an Indian-American woman not of O’Malley descent — from what Bob and Matt saw as their family business and ancestral right,” the petition claimed.Sheel asked that Matthew be enjoined from acting on behalf of the Seidler trusts and be removed as trustee.

She asked the court to void any actions to appoint anyone other than Sheel as the Padres’ control person.“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 the vision that Peter and I shared for the team will continue,” Sheel said in a statement.The Peter Seidler Trust issued a statement calling the suit “entirely without merit.”“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 many decades, as successor trustees of 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 took over the Padres in 2012.

He replaced Ron Fowler as the te...