The 1st Reserved Chamber of Business Law of the Court of Justice of São Paulo (TJ-SP) will analyze an appeal in a million-dollar dispute between the minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Cristiano Zanin and his father-in-law, lawyer Roberto Teixeira. The dispute involves the division of profits and the transfer of properties from a law firm that was run by the two alongside Valeska Zanin Martins, the minister’s wife.
The process began in the 7th Civil Court of the TJ-SP. In September 2025, judge Ricardo Augusto Ramos dismissed the action as unfounded and closed the case by recognizing the statute of limitations. For the judge, the facts in question occurred between 2013 and 2014 and can no longer be dismantled after more than 10 years.
O Estadão try to contact the minister’s office at the STF and the offices of Zanin Martins Advogados and Teixeira, Quattrini & Silvio Rocha Advogados Associados to request a statement.
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In the action, Roberto Teixeira maintained that acts carried out in the family’s old office, then called Teixeira Martins Advogados, had been simulated to benefit his daughters and son-in-law. According to him, the unequal distribution of profits and the donation in payment for properties would have functioned as a type of informal “sharing testament”, anticipating the division of his assets during his lifetime.
The lawyer stated that, although he held 55% of the company’s shares at the time, he would have been passed over in the distribution of properties valued at more than R$5 million, while his daughters, Valeska Zanin Martins and Larissa Teixeira Quattrini, retained half of the ownership of these assets. Teixeira also claimed that he continued to enjoy the properties and their income, which, in his version, would reinforce the only apparent nature of the operations.
At sentencing, the judge rejected this narrative. He highlighted that the properties were not part of the author’s personal assets, but belonged to the law firm, which would make the thesis of inheritance sharing legally unfeasible. For the judge, the center of the controversy was a corporate deliberation on the distribution of profits, and not a disguised succession deal.
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Another central point of the decision was the time elapsed. The judge highlighted that the action was only filed in 2024, more than a decade after the acts questioned, and that the allegation of nullity due to simulation cannot be used to perpetuate disputes over businesses whose effects have already been consolidated. Therefore, he recognized the prescription of the claim.
The ruling also ruled out the attempt to attribute bad faith to the defendants. According to the judge, all those involved are experienced lawyers, fully capable and aware of the legal effects of the acts carried out. He also pointed out a contradiction in the author’s conduct, when trying to cancel deals that he helped to structure.
“There is no way to recognize any possible defect in the legal transaction under attack, considering that it was concluded between older and capable people, with not even a single indication that they were unaware of their mental faculties at the time of the legal transaction being questioned, and it is worth asserting that they are lawyers and have the broadest legal knowledge of their acts”, wrote the judge.
With the appeal presented, the case will now be analyzed by the second instance of the São Paulo Court of Justice.
