DENVER—A federal appeals court has rejected another effort by a delivery man to claim a piece of Howard Hughes’ fortune, whose original plight was dramatized by the 1980’s Academy Award-winning “Melvin and Howard.”
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a jury in 1978 already determined that a hand-scrawled will offered by Melvin Dummar as evidence wasn’t authentic.
Dummar, of Brigham City, Utah, renewed his claim in 2006 after pilot Roberto Deiro came forward to say he dropped Hughes off at a Nevada brothel in December 1967, near where Dummar says he discovered Hughes face down and bloodied in the desert.
Dummar said the man claimed he was Hughes, but he didn’t believe it until someone he said was Hughes’ personal messenger delivered the handwritten will to the Brigham City gas station that Dummar owned.
Dummar claims Hughes left him $156 million in his will as a reward.
Dummar filed suit against Frank William Gay, a senior corporate officer for Hughes, and Hughes’ cousin William Lummis, a major beneficiary of the Hughes estate, who settled the estate with 21 distant cousins after years of litigation. Gay was included in the lawsuit because he was a senior executive for Hughes’ enterprises.
“Obviously, we and the family of Mr. Gay are very pleased by the decision, and this finally puts an end to a matter that was resolved 30 years ago,” said Peggy Tomsic, an attorney for Gay, who died in May.
Dummar’s lawsuit was filed by Stuart Stein, an estate-planning lawyer from Albuquerque, N.M., who had a radio show and was disbarred in December but was allowed to argue his case before the appellate court in May. His disbarment stemmed from his handling of a guardian and conservator case, according to the New Mexico Supreme Court’s disciplinary board.
Stein no longer keeps an office at an address listed for him, and a phone message and an e-mail were not returned. There was no home phone number listed for Stein. A message left at a number listed for Dummar in Utah was not immediately returned.
Stein argued that Hughes’ associates had met to discuss hiding information from Dummar. Stein said they knew about Deiro, the pilot, but didn’t disclose it at the original probate trial in 1977-78.
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court said Friday it was too late for Dummar and his attorney to bring up claims of fraud and racketeering, saying the statute of limitations began in 1978 when a jury declared the handwritten will invalid.
Those testifying at the probate trial said Hughes never left his hotel in December 1967, which was contradicted when Deiro came forward four years ago, saying he routinely flew Hughes to brothels in rural Nevada and confirmed parts of Dummar’s improbable story.
Even without Deiro’s new statements, the appeals panel said, Dummar had enough information 30 years ago to push forward with his claim. The panel said it was apparent that by 1978, Dummar already suspected the man in the desert could be Hughes.
“Why believe the pilot but not the man in the desert?” the panel wrote. “If the man in the desert was not Hughes, then Mr. Dummar’s account of Hughes’ agent showing up at Mr. Dummar’s gas station several weeks after Hughes’ death with a handwritten will bequeathing him millions of dollars would make not the slightest sense.”
