Dummar fails again in quest for share of Howard Hughes’ estate

Earlier on this blog, I reported on how Melvin Dummar was continuing his quest to obtain a portion of the estate of Howard Hughes.

Back in 1978, Melvin Dummar’s assertion that he was the beneficiary ($156 million) of Howard Hughes’s holographic will was rejected by a Las Vegas jury which determined that the alleged will was a fake.

On June 12, 2006, Dummar filed suit in federal district court in Salt Lake City claiming to have new evidence including a witness.  This witness is supposedly the pilot who flew Howard Hughes to a brothel near where Dummar claims he met Hughes.  This witness can then substantiate Dummar’s claim that he found Hughes in a dazed and confused condition and then drove him to Las Vegas for which he received the bequest as a reward.

Note that Dummar was not asking the court to relitigate the validity of the holographic will.  Instead, Dummar claimed that Hughes’s heirs prevented him from having a fair trial by concealing evidence of Hughes’s travels.

The district court later dismissed his lawsuit and on September 12, 2008, the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the dismissal. 

See Pamela Manson, 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rules against Melvin Dummar and the ‘Mormon Will’, Salt Lake Tribune, Sept. 13, 2008.