South Texas College of Law, Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 1, July, 1978 Page: 5 of 13
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4 —
The Winner* Corner
Local Attorney Proves Will False
By Molly Speer
Editor's Notei Molly Speer will
report monthly on the winning
attorney of an interesting or
controversial case. This month,
James Dilworth won a seven
month, one day trial in Las Vegas
where he proved that the will
claimed to have been Howard
Hughes' holographic will was in
fact false.
The recent victor on behalf of
the contestants of the Howard
Hoghes' "Mormon Will" case,
James Dilworth, sat back in his
the twenty-fifth floor of
exactly why he emerged as the
winner of the seven month and
one day trial in Las Vegas,
"I think basically it's the same
tiling that always wins lawsuits, it
Dean Walker
was the facts," Dilworth ex-
plained, "We had the facts, he
didn't."
Yet there were problems, even
though the facts were on Dil-
worth' side.
"When you're trying a lawsuit
out of state, you have two
problems. The first is the logistics
of getting your staff, your people
and the materials you need,"
Dilworth said. "The other pro-
blem is the lade of familiarity with
evidentiary and procedural
rules."
Dilworth pointed out that there
exists a certain confusion with the
use of proper phrases and words.
"The first time I said they didn't
lay a proper predicate, they didn't
know what the hell I meant. Their
code is different in so many
respects from the Texas Evidence
Code. You don't lay a predicate
out there, you lay a foundation.
They'll laugh at you when you say
Boards Management in New
York. I was sent there by this
company that I worked for.
I think it's because of the
success of the school and its
improvements. I realized at a very
early time that you could not get
money even as gifts if you rea%
needed it. It is very much like
borrowing money. The person
who can borrow money is the
person who doesn't have to have
it. So the first thing I set out to do
was to increase the image of the
school, improve the library and
the faculty and improve our cash
position. I did that by first
improving the library. Had I done
it the opposite way, improved the
faculty first, the faculty would
have been so expensive that I
would not have had any money
left over. Of course, we got away
from the YMCA and had to
acquire this building. First we
leased with an option to buy.
Then we exercised the option to
buy and then we remodeled the
inside as we needed the space.
We bought this additional half
of the block here as we could pay
for it.
Do yea have any other options
to buy?
No, I do not. I knew I had to
accumulate some money and I
wanted to keep the tuition low,
which I managed to do and still
saved about two million dollars in
addition to paying for the building
here and acquiring this other half
a block. Then I started adding
more faculty. Gradually, I wanted
to add to the faculty so that we
could digest each addition both
from a financial standpoint as
well as a teacher standpoint. I
think another asset in fund
Continued oa ¡page 6
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The reason Dilworth wasn't
using the proper phrase in
Nevada, he stated, was that
Nevada had adopted the origin-
ally proposed code for use in the
federal courts, and not the one
ultimately adopted.
Trying a case out of town
presents other problems, Dil-
worth suggested. Las Vegas,
Nevada is, at best, more difficult.
"You have no feel for the
community and how it looks at a
case, particularly a town as
unique and unusual as Las
Vegas."
Realizing this complication
prior to the trial, Dilworth placed
within his staff, a psychologist
and statistician to survey the
community. Dilworth felt this was
a "vital" aid in pre-jury selec-
Picking the jury itself was an
extremely important aspect of the
trial, he noted. Even with the use
of the pretrial survey, there were
many people he did not want
serving on the jury.
"We felt at the outset it was
best tg systematically exclude
Mormons from the jury because
the church was a very significant
beneficiary under the will."
Even with these precautions,
Dilworth admitted that his side
did not realize just how strong the
Mormon faction was behind the
opposition. He said this became
obvious to him just about the last
day of trial.
"We didn't know that the
Mormons were putting up money
to help with the payment of jury
costs, transcript fees and other
incidental trial expenses. This
was directly contrary to what we
were led to believe. Denying this
case became a battle of money v.
money, Dilworth pointed out that
the out-of-pocket expenses alone
were well into the hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Much of the
multi-million dollar defense was
used in the obtaining and trans-
porting of the expert witnesses.
Patronize
•WE HAD THE FACTS, HE DIDN'T.
"You have to have very qual-
ified experts with a long list of
credentials if you're going to try
to sell them to the jury," Dilworth
emphasized.
Some of the expert witnesses
who the contestants used con-
sisted of members from the only
two accredited American societies
of handwriting experts. These are
the American Society of Exam-
iners of Questioned Documents,
and the handwriting section of the
Academy for Forensic Science.
Dilworth mentioned that the
attorney for the proponent of the
will, Harold Rhoden, had to
secure his witnesses from Europe
to testify.
He described Rhoden as a
"very articulate lawyer, although
he made some very major blun-
ders."
For example, Dilworth stated,
he (Rhoden) should not have
brought Levane Forsythe, the
deliverer of the will, into the case.
"I think any lawyer who has
been around the tracks as many
times as Rhoden has, and cer-
tainly as many times as the rest of
us have, could see right through
him (Forsythe)."
Melvin Dummar, a major bene-
ficiary of the will, was proven to
have made prior inconsistent
statements concerning the will.
"By adding Forsythe to Dum-
mar, Rhoden had two noncred-
ible witnesses he had to carry on
his back, and I think that's what
sunk him."
Continuing his observations
about Rhoden, Dilworth stated
that he made another major
blunder.
Dilworth stated that he and his
two associates on the case divided
the days and hours for their final
arguments. Rhoden did not,
despite the fact that he was
present with five associates.
"He (Rhoden) must have such
a king-size ego that it probably
didn't occur to him that people
would get tired of hearing him
talk."
Dilworth explained that split-
ting up the case gave their team
an opportunity to concentrate on
the details.
"But Rhoden had to cover it all
— there's just no way I see that
one person could do that. It's like
preparing for 17 law exams at one
time."
mi) SSf-4711
KIMY DftlVK HOUSTON. Y8XAS HIM
Copian of
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Dies, David & Bettman, Gerald S. South Texas College of Law, Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 1, July, 1978, newspaper, July 1978; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth144377/m1/5/: accessed July 13, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting South Texas College of Law.