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Utahn Melvin Dummar's account of meeting Howard Hughes in the desert 40 years ago became the stuff of legend.
Proving it in a court of law, however, has been another matter. He lost a probate case three decades ago in Nevada and a Utah case earlier this year.
Now he's filed a new lawsuit in a Nevada court, seeking almost half a billion dollars from the late billionaire's estate and asking to bring the matter back to Utah for further litigation.
"I just want a day in court for Melvin," said Albuquerque attorney Stuart Stein, who represents Dummar. "He was cheated 30 years ago."
The legal action in Nevada outlines the same claims as the one recently dismissed in Utah. Dummar, a former gas station operator from Willard, claims that he saved Hughes' life by picking him up in rural Nevada on a frigid night and was repaid by being named in his will.
A handwritten will that surfaced after Hughes' death in 1976 left assets to medical institutes, charities, the Boy Scouts of America, relatives, personal aides, scholarships and executives of Hughes' companies - plus one-sixteenth of the estate each to Dummar and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The document became known as the Mormon Will.
Dummar, 61, has never collected a dime. A probate trial in Las Vegas ended with a jury returning a verdict in 1978 that said the document was bogus.
Last June, Dummar filed suit in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City claiming that a Hughes relative and an executive in Summa Corp., the holding company that took control of the billionaire's wealth after his death, coordinated false testimony to ensure that the handwritten will was rejected by the courts. He alleged that recently discovered evidence revealed the conspiracy.
The suit put Dummar's share of Hughes' fortune at $156 million and sought three times the amount of alleged damages, or $468 million.
Attorneys for the defendants - William Rice Lummis, now 77, whose mother was an aunt of Hughes, and Frank William Gay, 85, described as the "effective" chief operating officer of Summa, both of the Houston area - adamantly denied there was a conspiracy or false testimony.
Judge Bruce Jenkins threw out the Utah suit in January, ruling that the matter was "fully and fairly litigated" in the Las Vegas probate trial. Dummar has appealed that decision to the 10th U.S. District Court of Appeals in Denver.
In Nevada, Dummar filed suit in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas last week, as well as a separate request in state court in Clark County.
The federal filing was timed to meet a three-year deadline to bring a fraud claim in Nevada, according to Stein. He said Dummar learned of the conspiracy to cause false testimony at the probate trial on April 12, 2004, when Hughes' former pilot contacted the Utahn.
The Nevada state court filing is designed to get the case back to Utah, Stein said. It asks that the case be sent back to Jenkins' court, Stein said.
"I will move heaven and earth to get [Dummar] a day in court," Stein said.
Despite being labeled a scammer after the Nevada verdict, Dummar has stuck to his story: While driving on U.S. Highway 95 on Dec. 29, 1967, he pulled onto a dirt road to relieve himself and saw a man lying face down.
He was about to leave to get the sheriff when the man regained consciousness. Worried that the stranger would die from exposure, Dummar put him in his Chevy and, at the man's request, drove him 160 miles to Las Vegas. He left him at the back door of the Dunes Hotel after giving him some pocket change.
Before departing, the man said he would be forever indebted, according to Dummar, who said he disbelieved him when he said he was Howard Hughes.
The dispute over the will was revived when former FBI agent Gary Magnesen investigated the case and wrote a book titled "The Investigation." It includes the recollection of a Hughes employee who says he flew his womanizing boss to the Cottontail Ranch brothel, about seven miles from where Dummar says he found the reclusive billionaire.
In addition, the only surviving juror from the Nevada trial signed an affidavit saying the verdict would have been different had the jury been told about the pilot's account.
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