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November 08, 2007 at 04:49 AM
Cable television host Larry King has filed suit against a Maryland insurance brokerage in connection with complaints about life settlement transactions.
In a complaint filed in October in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, King alleges that the Meltzer Group Inc., Bethesda, Md., persuaded him to engage in transactions involving the purchase and resale of insurance policies with a total value of $15 million.
The insurance agency advised King on more than one occasion to buy a life policy with a trust under his control as the official owner of the policy, then to sell his stake in that trust, King alleges in the complaint.
King says he bought three policies with a total value of $10.5 million in 2002 to protect his wife and two minor children.
In February 2004, he says, he acted on the advice of Meltzer and used a trust to buy and sell a new $10 million life insurance policy for $550,000.
In October 2004, King says, he used a trust to buy and sell another policy, for $5 million, for $850,000.
King says the insurance agency should have warned him that his age and health might make buying replacement life insurance difficult.
If getting cash was the main objective, the agency should have had him start by selling a 2002 life insurance policy, through a transaction that would have generated a higher sale price along with returns that would have been taxed at the lower capital gains rate rather than at the higher rate imposed on ordinary income, King alleges.
