Barbara Goldsmith - Johnson V. Johnson

The Straw Man
Little Gloria Happy at Last

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC .

Copyright 1987 by Barbara Goldsmith

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

Portions of this book were originally published in Vanity Fair.

Much of this book is based on in-depth interviews and on thousands of pages of trial transcripts, depositions, affidavits, and other legal papers. Often they are excerpted and abridged, and quotes are rearranged to create a logical progression, but in no way has the original meaning of the material been altered.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldsmith, Barbara.
Johnson v. Johnson.

1. Johnson, J. Seward, d. 1983Estate. 2. Probate
law and practiceNew York (State) I. Title.
II. Title: Johnson versus Johnson.
KF759.J64G65 1987 346.73052 86-46169
eISBN: 978-0-307-80036-7 347.30652

Photographs follow .
Photo credits will be found on .

v3.1

For
Andrew
David
John

The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

R ICHARD B RINSLEY S HERIDAN , The Critic, 1779

J . Seward Johnson, the eighty-seven-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, signed his last will on April 14, 1983, leaned back in his wheelchair, and remarked, This solves a lot of problems. He died thirty-nine days later, leaving virtually his entire $500 million estate to his third wife, Barbara (called Basia, and pronounced Basha) Piasecka Johnson, a woman whom he had met fifteen years previously, when she was employed as a cook/chambermaid by his second wife. Basia had arrived from Poland in 1968, with $100 to her name, a degree in art history, and a smattering of English. Within fifteen months she was living in a luxurious Sutton Place apartment paid for by Johnson and serving her benefactor as a $12,000-a-year art curator and occasional scuba-diving companion. They were married November 11, 1971, eight days after his divorce. She was thirty-four, he was seventy-six.

According to Alexander Forger of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, who represented the six Johnson children (ranging in age from forty-one to sixty) as objectants to Seward Johnsons will, Basia relied on her ability to enchant and captivate Seward and shattered his second marriage of thirty-two years. Forger alleged, One is drawn unmistakenly to the conclusion that the real attraction for Basia was the money. In the course of her twelve-year marriage to Johnson, Basia came to dominate Sewards life in every way, cutting him off from trusted advisers and employees. Forger charged that Basia and the Johnsons lawyer, Nina Zagat of Shearman & Sterling, whose allegiance was to Basia and who stood to gain approximately $8 million as an executor and $900,000 annually for the remainder of Basias life as a trusteeship fee, had, through a series of twenty-two will changes, gradually given Basia more and more of the estate, the last vestige having been erased as he lay in extremis the month before death arrived. Johnson had disinherited his children and in a final will even cut out a $72 million bequest to his beloved charity, Harbor Branch, an oceanographic institute devoted to marine exploration and research. The children charged that Johnson was senile when he executed his last will and testament. They also brought charges of undue influence, fraud, and duress against Basia Johnson and Nina Zagat.

Basias lawyers, Donald Christ and Robert Osgood of Sullivan & Cromwell, told a different story: her husband had left her the bulk of his estate because he was madly in love with her, because he wanted to avoid paying unnecessary taxes, and because he had become increasingly disillusioned with the profligate and wasted lives of his children. In an affidavit Osgood pointed out that Johnson had given Harbor Branch $130 million during his lifetime and that, far from disinheriting his children, he had in 1944 established trusts for them of Johnson & Johnson stock which, if left untouched, not counting income and dividends, would now be worth an aggregate of $660 million. Johnson, he contended, had believed his children had enough money and had not used it wisely. The exhibits accompanying Osgoods affidavit highlighted seamy tales of aberrant sexual practices, messy divorces, drug addiction, mental instability, and suicide attempts:

The 1977 divorce of Mary Lea Johnson, the eldest daughter, from Dr. Victor DArc brought to light her accusation that he had commissioned his homosexual lover to murder her for her money and that he had demanded that she have sexual relations with other men while he watched. DArc charged that one of Mary Leas sons had injected their dog with heroin and another had plotted to blow up the Far Hills, New Jersey, police station.

When Jennifer Johnson, the youngest daughter, and her first husband, race-car driver Peter Gregg, divorced, he received from her $800,000, for which he signed a loan note. He was remarried for ten days when he shot himself and left the money to his new wife. Jennifer considered contesting the will to get the money back, but his estate finally repaid her.

In Seward Johnson, Jr.s 1962 divorce petition, the sordid details of his disastrous first marriage were graphically described. He claimed to have been reduced to servitude as babysitter, chauffeur, and errand boy while his wifes alleged lover kissed her lips, legs, thighs, and other parts of her body. Another alleged lover took his place in the bedroom while he slept on a couch in his dressing room. Basia asserted that Seward Johnson had removed Harbor Branch from his final will because Junior controlled that organization and her husband feared his sons incompetence.

The trial was the longest (seventeen weeks), the most sensational (there were charges against Sullivan & Cromwell of bribing and intimidating potential witnesses, a riot in the courtroom, death threats against the judge), and the most expensive (legal fees are said to exceed $24 million) will contest in United States history.

Thirty-three witnesses for the Johnson children painted a picture of a senile Johnson suffering from twenty-three ailments, including cancer of the prostate which had metastasized to his bones, congestive heart failure, arteriosclerosis, anemia, and hyponatremia. His life with Basia was characterized as a nightmare existence of isolation, coercion, physical violence, and mental torture.

Basia Johnsons forty-one witnesses testified that her husband was competent, kind, sentient to the end, aware of current events, skillful as an art collector, and grateful for the love of his wife, who cared for him with utmost devotion.