I am familiar with the history of the Goodwin family, the patriarch founded GEICO. The grandson of the founder was about my age, and he had a reputation as a hell-raiser. I had friends who went to school with him, and they were not flattering in their remarks. The article below is a bit to plow-through, but I don't know why this hasn't ever been made into a movie, it's got lots of drama, sex, and a multi-million dollar fortune at stake.
For those of you interested in history here's some on the founder of GEICO, and his offspring:
Goodwin Kin Wins Millions In Long Legal Fight
April 2, 1989|By LARRY KELLER, Staff Writer Sun Sentinel, Ft. Lauderdale FL
It is doubtful that 18-year-old Leo Goodwin III ever thought about the ramifications of getting his girlfriend pregnant back in the Free Love days of 1969.
After Elizabeth Anne Goodwin`s birth, her father, the grandson of the founder of GEICO Insurance Co., quietly gave
financial
support to the girl`s mother.
Leo Goodwin III continued to enjoy the pleasures of the rich -- partying, traveling and, most of all, driving fast and reckless in expensive cars.
Leo Goodwin III`s driving mishaps were the subject of sensational headlines in the 1970s. He got dozens of traffic violations, and in one 1975 crash a Fort Lauderdale teen-ager died and another was crippled.
A drug overdose ended his life abruptly in 1977. His death at age 25 triggered a legal battle for his grandfather`s fortune and his own that only now is nearing an end.
Last week, the final two pending issues in the case were resolved, and Leo Goodwin III `s daughter, now 19 and the sole surviving direct Goodwin descendant, will inherit more than $8 million.
The probate case of Leo Goodwin Sr. has been active 18 years, since his death in May 1971, the oldest such file in Broward County.
Squabbling over the senior Goodwin`s fortune has led to more than two dozen lawsuits. There are warehouses full of documents related to the case, and lawyers have made millions of dollars in
fees
from the litigation -- with nearly $4 million paid by the insurance baron`s estate.
The Florida Bar has spent $104,000 investigating and trying a lawyer central to the contentious case on numerous charges of misconduct. ``Anytime you`ve got a battle over millions of dollars, you`re in for a long, protracted battle,`` said attorney H. Dohn Williams, who represents Elizabeth Anne Goodwin and her mother.``People don`t give up easily over that kind of
money
,`` he said. ``We were going to kill each other with paper work.``
At the center of the controversy was the baby girl born Jan. 27, 1970, to Lynn C. McNees and fathered by Leo Goodwin III.
The Goodwins were an old-money, well-known, colorful Fort Lauderdale family. Leo Goodwin Sr. was a traveling auditor for the railroad and an accountant for a Texas insurance
company
. In 1936, at the age of 50, he obtained financing that enabled him to
start Government Employees Insurance Company -- GEICO.
In 1948, GEICO became publicly owned. The corporation now has nearly $3 billion in
assets
.As the company prospered in the early 1960s, the Goodwins moved to Fort Lauderdale. Leo Goodwin Sr. amassed a considerable fortune, but unlike his son and grandson, he was not ostentatious.
``He was a self-made man,`` said Helen Furia, his secretary the last nine years of his life. ``He was just a wonderful man, humble and sincere.``
He donated $300,000 for cancer research laboratories, and the Goodwin Institute for Cancer Research Inc. continues its work in Plantation FL.
When the senior Goodwin died in 1971 at the age of 84, the gross
value
of his estate was estimated to be $55 million. His 19-page will left three-fourths of his fortune to his son, Leo Goodwin Jr., and one-fourth to his grandson, Leo Goodwin III. He also had a complex estate
financial plan
that established a trust in which Leo Goodwin Jr. and Leo Goodwin III were beneficiaries, and a second trust in which the grandson was the sole beneficiary. There also were two foundations and a trust created for charitable purposes.
BAR ACCUSES ATTORNEY
The architect of the estate plan was Goodwin`s lawyer, Alphonse Della-Donna. In the years to follow, opposing lawyers and the Florida Bar would accuse Della-Donna of prolonging estate litigation for his personal gain. Leo Goodwin Jr. acted as the executor of his father`s estate. In that capacity, he received $450,000 in fees before his own death seven years later. Della-Donna then took over that task.
Leo Goodwin Jr. was a former Texas Ranger, a colonel in the Office of Strategic Services -- the forerunner of the CIA -- and was long interested in electronic gadgetry for use in intelligence gathering. He founded the National Intelligence Academy in Fort Lauderdale, where law- enforcement officers learn the latest uses of electronic devises. Leo Goodwin Jr. became a GEICO board member and a yacht
broker
. His fortune once was estimated at $100 million and he was counted among the nation`s 25 richest men. His only child,
Leo Goodwin III, was born on Jan. 4, 1952. The boy`s mother died when he was 4 years old. Although he died at 25, Leo Goodwin III garnered far more local headlines than his father or grandfather. The stories were not flattering. ``He was totally spoiled,`` said his stepmother, Fran Goodwin. ``He had anything he wanted. The father just doted on the son.``Father and son lived in an enormous 25-room mansion fronting the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale.
Leo Goodwin III had a driver`s license only two months before it was suspended the first of several times. At 17, he was convicted of six counts of possessing and selling LSD and marijuana. He began his four-year term of probation with a trip to Europe and a
cruise
on a yacht. In July 1975, he drove his Porsche 82 mph in a 35 mph speed zone on Ft. Lauderdale's Bayview Drive, colliding with another car. One 17-year-old Fort Lauderdale High School student was killed, another seriously injured, in the crash.
Three weeks later, Leo Goodwin III, then 23, was behind the wheel of his
Ferrari
when he struck a parked camper and a Mark IV Continental. Both vehicles caught fire. As a result of the accidents, Broward Circuit Judge Gene Fischer took the extraordinary step of issuing a temporary injunction
prohibiting him from driving anywhere in Florida. A couple of months later, Leo Goodwin III was shot in the leg during a barroom brawl with Outlaws motorcycle club members in Charlotte, N.C.
SENTENCED TO JAIL
In November 1975, he was sentenced by then-County Judge Bob Butterworth -- now Florida`s attorney general -- to 37 days in jail and two years of probation for reckless driving. Soon after his release, he was sentenced to additional jail time for violating probation, drunken driving and defying Fischer`s ban on driving in Florida. On June 1, 1977, he and a girlfriend passed out in his family`s mansion. She recovered. He did not. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as ``multiple drug intoxication.`` A month later, flight attendant Lynn McNees, then 26, filed a paternity suit in Broward Circuit Court, in which she stated that Leo Goodwin III was the father of her 7-year-old daughter. At least two other women made similar claims, never proven.
``You can`t believe the girls who came to the front door with pictures,`` Fran Goodwin said. Leo Goodwin Jr. did not learn he had a granddaughter until his son died, seven years after her birth. ``It was a shock,`` Fran Goodwin said.
Leo Goodwin III had no will, so his heirs automatically became beneficiaries of his estate and the trust set up for him by his grandfather. If he had no heirs, his father would receive his
assets
. By that time, Leo Goodwin Jr. -- the man who once was worth $100 million -- was strapped for cash. One year earlier, he had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, reporting assets of $48 million and
debts
of $110 million. As the
stock
market plummeted in the 1970s, so did Leo Goodwin Jr.`s assets -- much of which were in GEICO stock. From a 1972 high of $60 a share, the price dropped to less than $4 a share in January 1976, when the Securities and Exchange Commission halted sale of the stock for a few days. ``There was a three-week period during the recent stock market fall when I lost about $65 million,`` Leo Goodwin Jr. was quoted as saying at the time. ``Of course, it was all on paper.`` Seven months after his son`s overdose, Leo Goodwin Jr. died of cancer at age 63. Each of the Leo Goodwins was an only child.
DAUGHTER THE SOLE HEIR
That left Elizabeth Anne Goodwin -- also an only child -- as the sole remaining heir. If McNees could prove paternity, her daughter not only would collect from Leo Goodwin III`s estate, but also from that of Leo Goodwin Sr. This was because a clause in the grandfather`s will left one-fourth of his estate to Leo Goodwin III, or to his heirs, in the event Leo Goodwin III died. The odds were against McNees, said Williams, her lawyer for the past 10 years.
Attorneys
for the estates of Leo Goodwin Sr., Leo Goodwin Jr. and the Leo Goodwin Foundation of Fort Lauderdale fought her in court. ``You`ve got an illegitimate child trying to establish a claim against one of Fort Lauderdale`s most prominent families,`` Williams said. ``We were in an uphill battle against more lawyers than you can shake a stick at.``
In December 1979, nearly 2 1/2 years after McNees filed the paternity suit, Broward Circuit Judge James M. Reasbeck ruled that Leo Goodwin III was the father of Elizabeth Anne Goodwin. That enabled guardians for the child to receive more than $600,000 from Leo Goodwin III`s estate, plus $1 million from a trust his grandfather established for him. The money would provide McNees and her daughter a steady
income
and enable them to pay lawyers for future battles to get assets from the estate of Leo Goodwin Sr. It was not an easy fight. Classmates taunted Elizabeth Anne Goodwin when they learned the circumstances of her birth and of the subsequent litigation, her mother said. Six years ago, they moved to an Atlanta suburb to find anonymity, she said. McNees, who married a telecommunications executive a few years ago, still has a home in Fort Lauderdale. She declined to be interviewed in detail for this story. Even after paternity was proved, Alphonse Della-Donna, the lawyer for Leo Goodwin Sr.`s estate, argued that Elizabeth Anne Goodwin was not an heir
because she was illegitimate.
In 1982, Broward Circuit Judge Robert W. Tyson Jr. concluded that Leo Goodwin Sr.`s will said nothing about the subject. Della-Donna appealed the paternity ruling, and in late 1985 an appellate court also ruled against him.
ESTATE SUITS DRAG ON
``This estate should have been over by 1981 at the latest,`` said Elliot Borkson, the
lawyer
for Leo Goodwin Jr.`s estate. He said Della-Donna`s legal activity caused it to continue for years at great expense. Borkson said Della-Donna and his law firm made more than $3.2 million in attorneys` and executor`s fees from the Goodwin estate.
Lawyers
hired by Della-Donna for estate-related litigation have received more than $703,000 from the estate, for a total of nearly $4 million, Borkson said. ``They would have taken twice as much if we hadn`t battled them all the way,`` Borkson said.
Borkson said he did not know how much he and other lawyers representing Leo Goodwin Jr.`s estate have been paid from litigation over Leo Goodwin Sr.`s estate. Lawyers who worked on behalf of Elizabeth Anne Goodwin have received more than $2 million. Not all the legal skirmishes included Della-Donna, whose involvement in the case ended last year. Attorneys for Elizabeth Anne Goodwin`s guardians and Leo Goodwin Jr.`s estate tangled over the allocation of $9 million in state and federal taxes overpaid by Leo Goodwin Sr.`s estate and refunded by the Internal Revenue
Service
and the state of Florida. The money was deposited with Leo Goodwin Sr.`s estate. That was fine with the attorneys for Leo Goodwin Jr.`s estate: His estate was a 75 percent beneficiary of Leo Goodwin Sr.`s estate, while Elizabeth Anne Goodwin would receive 25 percent. But attorney Williams argued that the $9 million should be deposited in the trust
fund
created by Leo Goodwin Sr., which named Leo Goodwin Jr. and Leo Goodwin III as equal beneficiaries. This would double Elizabeth Anne Goodwin`s share to 50 percent -- from $2.25 million to $4.5 million. A few months ago, the lawyers settled on that issue, with Elizabeth Anne Goodwin receiving more than half the $9 million. ``With Della-Donna out of the picture, you can make business judgments and settle things in an amicable
fashion
,`` Borkson said.
Throughout it all, McNees and her daughter have kept a low profile.
Ultimately, Elizabeth Anne Goodwin will get between $8 million and $9 million, Williams said. She already has received much of that
money
. The rest will be forthcoming when she turns 21. ``I don`t really think (the money) has changed me at all,`` Elizabeth Anne Goodwin said. A guardianship consisting of her mother, Williams and an accountant will manage her money until she is 30, investing it in blue-chip stocks,
real estate
and tax-free bonds, Williams said. ``Elizabeth is the spitting image of her
father
,`` Williams said. But the resemblance is superficial. The girl is a far cry from the fast-living and irresponsible Leo Goodwin III, he said. Elizabeth Anne Goodwin was an honor student in high school and is active in her church and with charities. Last year, she was a volunteer in a program that teaches reading skills to disadvantaged
children
. Today, she is a college freshman. ``She is really a first-class person,`` Williams said.
unk:
