Lawyer's Lover Loses His Corvettes, 1936 Mercedes: Ann Woolner
Bloomberg Opinion
When famed Texas trial lawyer John O’Quinn skidded off a Houston parkway in a speeding SUV and slammed into a tree last October, he left behind a mixed legacy.
He had won billions of dollars for clients but incurred rebukes from bar groups for ethical misconduct. Ex-clients and employees said he had cheated them, but he also handed over massive contributions to multiple good causes.
In the last five years of his life, he had collected more than 800 classic cars. And that’s now the source of one of the most bitter disputes his death has provoked.
What the twice-divorced lawyer didn’t leave behind was a single sheet of paper that would have bequeathed to his longtime companion the 28 cars she says he meant her to have.
Even with a private marriage ceremony she says occurred, a wedding ring and her reputation as his wife, this brilliant lawyer never filed a simple document at the courthouse that would have made them legally married. Nor did he update his year-old will, which left everything to his charitable foundation.
A probate judge this week turned down Darla Lexington’s bid to halt the sale of five of the cars she claimed were hers: three classic Corvettes, a 1936 Mercedes-Benz and a 1938 Talbot- Lago valued at $3.5 million to $4.5 million.
Look for them among other shiny toys in auction in Pebble Beach, California, this weekend.
The moral of the story is promise her anything, but write it down if you mean it, and do it soon. For companions who figure a lover’s intentions are good enough, remember: They aren’t.
Disputed Claims
That O’Quinn’s sudden death at 68 would provoke disputed claims should surprise no one.
In life he said he stood for the powerless against the powerful. With tobacco, breast implant and asbestos cases, his huge wins put him among the most successful plaintiffs’ lawyers in Texas, which is saying a lot. He won a $1 billion judgment in a diet-drug case against Wyeth.
And yet one of the debts the estate has agreed to pay is $46.5 million to thousands of breast implant clients who claimed he overcharged them.
A concrete contractor says O’Quinn had for years been dodging a bill for work at a planned car museum, now $132,441 with interest. A court official told him, “Mr. O’Quinn was very difficult to serve,” the contractor said in a probate claim.
O’Quinn used to say he was devoted to justice, but state bar associations in South Carolina and Texas said he broke ethics rules in his pursuit of it.
Egregious Misconduct
In the most egregious misconduct, the O’Quinn firm was among those a federal judge in Corpus Christi said had essentially concocted bogus lung disease diagnoses for thousands of people.
And for all his lucrative wins, the estate told the probate judge it must sell the cars or else default on a bank loan. The Houston Chronicle reports he owed $90 million to Bank of America, apparently for his legal and real estate businesses.
Waiting in the wings is another multimillion-dollar claim against the estate. Riding with O’Quinn when he smashed into the tree was a law firm employee who had been his assistant, Johnny Lee Cutliff, 56. He also died at the scene.
The Cutliff family is suing the estate for $7 million plus punitive damages, which could be substantial. Police concluded O’Quinn had been doing between 76 to 79 mph in a 40-mph zone. O’Quinn and Cutliff were at a Houston airport when the lawyer realized he had forgotten key documents and they rushed back to retrieve them.
Many Grievances
Plenty of folks have grievances against O’Quinn, but so far Lexington doesn’t blame him for her plight. Now in her late 50s, she met him through the breast implant case he filed for her, according to an estate lawyer. Eventually, she testified in probate court last week, he became her “husband, partner and lover.”
She nursed him in sickness and threw parties for him in health. She merged her assets into his, she said in court documents. O’Quinn promised repeatedly to look after her financially and legally.
At his urging, she said, she gave up her own ventures and job prospects to oversee his ranch andcar collection.
But O’Quinn signed a will a year before his death, leaving the whole estate to his charitable foundation. And while a provision in the will reserved to him the right to list individual bequests later, he never did.
A to-do list he wrote shortly before his death names a lawyer to see for a “will change for D.” He never made it there.
No Insurance Policies
Neither car titles nor auto insurance policies bore her name, although witnesses said he told them some of the cars were hers.
“What’s relevant in the eyes of the law is not what people say he was going to do, but rather what he actually did,” Houston lawyer Dale Jefferson, who represents the estate, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
O’Quinn did name Lexington the beneficiary in a $2 million life insurance policy, Jefferson said. And the estate is paying her $6,000 a month, at least for now.
By all reports, O’Quinn was larger than life when advocating for clients or donating millions to hospitals, colleges and political campaigns or, yes, even cutting ethical corners.
Now, in death, he seems so much smaller.
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net
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