PJI LAW — ELIAS KERBY

Role: Civil law firm retained by Valerie Gagnon in July 2025 under a specific contingency-style agreement: to represent her against executor Burke & Herbert Bank and Trustee Foster Friedman if they failed in their fiduciary duties and refused to honor the mandatory distributions owed to her under Article X of the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust (The Valerie Gagnon Trust).

Summary: PJI LAW and attorney Elias Kerby were paid through the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust — the very estate they were hired to enforce — with fees drawn from Valerie Gagnon’s inheritance. Their mandate, as set out in their own engagement terms, was to act if the executor and trustee refused to disburse what was obligated. When that refusal occurred, they did not honor the agreement. Instead, in April 2026, Kerby told Valerie she would “never have enough money to pay their fees” and dropped her as a client three months before a critical legal deadline. No filing was made. No motion was brought. No enforcement was attempted.

The firm accepted payment from the trust, then told a trust beneficiary she was too poor to pursue the enforcement they had been hired to carry out — despite the fact that their fees were being paid from the very inheritance they refused to fight for.

Key facts on the record:

Retained July 2025 under an agreement to represent Valerie Gagnon against executor Burke & Herbert Bank and Trustee Foster Friedman if they refused to perform their fiduciary duties under the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust
Paid through the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust — fees drawn from Valerie Gagnon’s inheritance, with terms and amount not fully disclosed to her
Executor and trustee refused to disburse what was obligated under Article X — the triggering condition the agreement anticipated
At that point, rather than pursue enforcement, attorney Elias Kerby told Valerie she would “never have enough money to pay their fees” and PJI LAW dropped her as a client
At the time Kerby told Valerie she would “never have enough money to pay their fees,” he was fully aware that Gaetane Gagnon’s personal investment account held approximately $1,400,000 USD — a distinct account, separate from the trust documents, whose records he had access to as retained counsel.
Kerby also had full knowledge of the value of 511 Princess Street, Alexandria, Virginia — a property appraised at $2,200,000 USD, a real estate asset forming part of the estate he was retained to enforce.
Kerby also had knowledge of the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust’s additional real property assets — including a cottage currently occupied by Valerie Gagnon, valued at $800,000 CAD, forming part of the estate he was retained to enforce.
At the time Kerby made that statement, two separate trust instruments — the Gaetane Gagnon Trust and the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust — had already triggered active distribution obligations. Upon Gaetane Gagnon’s death in 2025, Friedman, as Trustee of the Gaetane Gagnon Trust, had an independent, immediate, and mandatory obligation to disburse the assets of that trust — including her personal investment account of approximately $1,400,000 USD — directly to Valerie. This was not discretionary. This was Friedman’s obligation as Trustee of Gaetane’s trust. Pierre Paul Gagnon died in 2023. Under the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust, Article X — The Valerie Gagnon Trust — was triggered at Gaetane’s death in 2025, and 100% of the remaining estate was to be funded into the Valerie Gagnon Trust. Friedman, as acting Trustee, was obligated to make that happen. Both instruments had triggered. Both created active legal obligations to disburse to Valerie. Both obligations existed simultaneously at the moment Kerby told her she would never have enough money and to find another lawyer in April 2026.
Separately and explicitly, under the Gaetane Gagnon Trust, Friedman had an independent and immediate obligation to disburse Gaetane’s personal investment account — approximately $1,400,000 USD — to Valerie upon Gaetane’s death in 2025, an obligation Kerby was retained to compel. Under the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust, Article X — The Valerie Gagnon Trust — required that 100% of the remaining estate be funded into the Valerie Gagnon Trust upon Gaetane’s death, an obligation Friedman, as acting Trustee, was likewise required to perform. Both instruments had triggered. Both created active legal obligations to disburse to Valerie. Both obligations existed simultaneously at the moment Kerby — in April 2026 — told her she would never have enough money and to find another lawyer. In April 2026, when Elias Kerby told Valerie Gagnon to find another lawyer, she was the named beneficiary of two separate trust instruments, both already triggered, with distributions already legally owed under both — and with the known asset base of those two instruments totaling at minimum $4,400,000 in documented value, with the full contents of the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust still unaccounted for.
Termination occurred in April 2026, approximately three months before a critical legal deadline, when Kerby told Valerie to find another lawyer
No filing made. No motion brought. No accounting compelled. No enforcement attempted.
The firm was paid from the estate it was hired to enforce, then told the beneficiary she was too poor to be worth representing
Kerby was retained specifically to protect Valerie Gagnon against Trustee Foster Friedman. The Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust — the document he was hired to enforce — contains Article XIII, which grants Friedman, as named Trust Protector, absolute and unchecked power: the power to appoint or remove trustees at any time, for any reason, without cause; to modify or reform any provision of the trust; to apply those modifications retroactively to the inception of the trust; to move the trust to another state or country; and to act even with a direct conflict of interest — all without notice to Valerie Gagnon, without court approval, and without personal liability.
Kerby either failed to read Article XIII, or read it and disclosed nothing to his client. What Valerie Gagnon knows about the trust that governs her inheritance — including the existence of Article XIII and its implications — was not provided by her retained attorney. It was provided by an AI. In her own words: ‘What I know about the trust is what AI told me.’ Not from the lawyer paid from that estate to protect her.

In the context of a trust architecture deliberately structured to concentrate power in Trust Protector Foster Friedman, Kerby’s failure to act and failure to warn did more than abandon a client; it left the central conflict of interest untouched. By accepting payment from the estate while neither challenging Article XIII nor disclosing its implications to the beneficiary, PJI LAW operated as another layer of insulation around the colluding actors in Bulfinch Square, preserving the arrangement that keeps a documented multi-million-dollar estate beyond the reach of the woman it was written to protect.

The statement that Valerie Gagnon would “never have enough money” was not a billing assessment. It was made by an attorney who had full knowledge that the estate he was retained to enforce included approximately $1,400,000 USD in Gaetane Gagnon’s personal investment account, a $2,200,000 USD property at 511 Princess Street, Alexandria, Virginia, and a cottage currently occupied by Valerie Gagnon, valued at $800,000 CAD as part of the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust — documented, known assets of roughly $4,400,000 at the time the statement was made. These were the KNOWN assets. And critically, these were not future or contingent assets — two separate trust instruments had already triggered, and the distributions were legally obligated at the moment the statement was made. The full contents of the Pierre Paul Gagnon Trust remain unaccounted for: no accounting has ever been produced, and no one outside the colluding parties knows what else it holds. Either Kerby had already concluded that Valerie would be structurally blocked from accessing even the documented $4,400,000 in known assets and failed to disclose that assessment to his client, or he made a deliberately false statement to justify abandoning a case that had become inconvenient — while knowing those were only the documented, known assets on the record. The public record does not permit a third interpretation.