New shot at Howard Hughes estate

Lawyer pins case on pilot statement

P. Solomon Banda, Associated Press

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Dummar says he became heir of estate after saving Hughes.

It's the stuff movies are made of - literally: A delivery man says he rescued Howard Hughes after he found him facedown and bloodied in the desert, so the reclusive billionaire left him $156 million in a hand-scrawled will as a reward.

A jury didn't buy it 30 years ago, but Melvin Dummar's attorney says the story - dramatized in 1980's Academy Award-winning Melvin and Howard - has become a lot more believable.

The attorney, Stuart Stein, told a federal appeals court Wednesday that Dummar deserves another shot at the money because of pilot Robert Diero, who came forward in 2004 to say he flew Hughes to a brothel in Nevada around the time and the place Dummar said he found Hughes.

Stein, an estate-planning lawyer from Albuquerque with a radio show, argued that Hughes' associates knew about Diero but didn't disclose it at the original probate trial in 1977-78.

"The judgment was obtained by fraud," Stein told a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Dummar's lawsuit seeks the money from two men who benefited from Hughes' will, one of whom is deceased. Randy Dryer, an attorney for one of the estates, told the appeals judges that Stein's allegations of fraud are based on "speculation and conjecture."

And Dryer said even if a jury heard from Diero and believed the story, "It doesn't necessarily follow that the jury would have concluded that the (will) was valid. They could have easily concluded that Mr. Dummar saw a golden opportunity to reward himself for his good deeds."

Dryer also argued the will already was determined to be a forgery, saying that it doesn't contain the authentic writing of Hughes.

Dummar is among the most famous of hundreds of people who came forward claiming to be heirs to Hughes' estate after the eccentric billionaire's death in 1976.