Hope in store for U.S. retailers?

Two judges will have a big impact on the fortune of David Simon, the boss of his family’s American shopping-mall firm.

The first must decide a bitter dispute over the will of Simon’s late billionaire father, which was controversially revised only months before his death to exclude Simon and two siblings in favour of a second wife.

One of Simon’s sisters, ostensibly acting alone, launched a legal challenge to the will in January.

But he stands to inherit a nine-figure sum if the judge accepts her claim that Melvin Simon, the co-founder of the firm, was coerced into signing the new will.

The second judge, in a bankruptcy rather than a probate court, may play a crucial role in determining the fate of the Simon Property Group’s $10 billion offer, made public on Feb. 16, to buy its biggest rival in the shopping-mall business, General Growth Properties, which entered Chapter 11 protection last April.