Utah judge rejects Dummar's bid for a new trial

Melvin Dummar's most recent quest for a share in the estate of the late billionaire Howard Hughes has hit a dead end.

In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins said that a 1976 probate trial in Las Vegas — in which a jury declared bogus a copy of Hughes' will that left money to Dummar, the Boy Scouts and the LDS Church — barred Dummar from pursuing his latest lawsuit.

"The court determines that through this action, Dummar is attempting to circumvent the Nevada court's final judgment and to, either directly or indirectly, relitigate his entitlement to a portion of Hughes' estate," Jenkins wrote.

During a hearing last November, Jenkins expressed serious concern over Dummar's claim to one-sixteenth of Hughes' $2.5 billion estate, or $156 million.

Dummar, who lives just outside of Brigham City, has worked a variety of service jobs. His latest has been delivering and selling meat products to rural areas. At one point, Dummar made a brief effort at being a singer.

His story was the subject of an Academy Award-winning movie, "Melvin and Howard," in 1980, starring Jason Robards as Hughes.

Dummar claims that in 1967, when he was working as a gas-station attendant, he rescued a man whom he thought was homeless, from the side of a road in the Nevada desert just outside of Las Vegas. Dummar later said the homeless man was Hughes, and Dummar maintained that Hughes named him as a beneficiary in a handwritten will.

Entitled the "holographic will," also known as "the Mormon will," it listed 16 beneficiaries, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Boy Scouts.

Dummar's attorney, Stuart Stein, said his office staff members are weighing their options after the ruling this week. "We're studying it. All the lawyers are," Stein told the Deseret Morning News.

Stein said that Jenkins had questioned why the lawsuit was not filed in Nevada. One of the options is to ask a Nevada court to have the 1976 probate verdict overturned. A second option is to appeal the Utah ruling to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Stein said.

Dummar, meanwhile, took the news of the judge's decision fairly well and was prepared for it, given the judge's concerns at the hearing last November, Stein said. But the lawyer added that Dummar remains determined to pursue his crusade to collect an inheritance he feels entitled to and to clear his name.

"We know what the truth is, and the truth will ultimately come out," Stein said.