Sad Saga of a Will, Wealth and Suicide

A clash of wills and legal titans. . . . Even movie moguls have to deal with the homeowners association. . . . Hollywood heads down Tobacco Road. . . .

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REVERSAL OF FORTUNE: Was wealthy Beverly Hills matron Hermine Weinberg of sound mind when she changed her will in 1985, cutting out her son and daughter and leaving her millions to charity a few days before taking her own life?

Her husband, William, who was divorcing her, immediately contested the will--”a hodgepodge of chicken scratchings,” he called it in court papers. He hoped to invalidate the document by proving to a court that his wife was mentally unstable, and he hired one of the nation’s most prestigious law firms to argue his case.

Now, he’s suing that firm--New York-based Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom--for fraud and malpractice, claiming that his litigators goofed, concealed their mistake from him and forced him to settle by paying $35 million to the Jewish charity Chabad and foundations for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Weinberg’s 12-year legal saga is complex and overwhelmingly sad, drawing comparisons to soap operas such as “Peyton Place.”

The trial that began earlier this month is reopening the tragic past of a wealthy but unhappy family. It will bring some of the biggest names in the legal profession to the witness stand to testify about lawyerly ethics. Ultimately, it may prove embarrassing to one of the nation’s top law firms.

On one side of Judge Martin Suits’ courtroom sits Weinberg, a multimillionaire who owned a $200-million, five-star Hawaiian hotel until a slumping real estate market led to a reversal of his fortunes. He’s still worth millions, according to his lawyers, just not so many millions.

On the other side are Weinberg’s former lawyers, most notably Frank Rothman, who once headed MGM, has represented most of the major movie studios, the National Football League, the National Basketball Assn. and a slew of Fortune 500 companies.

Weinberg’s court filings portray his wife as a troubled woman who fired guns in the house and set the drapes on fire. He says she slit her wrists at their son’s bar mitzvah. Toward the end of her life, she wandered around the house “like a zombie,” the documents state.

Weinberg is seeking $100 million in damages from his former lawyers, contending that they allowed two mental health experts central to his case to discard their notes, which broke court discovery rules. When a Los Angeles Superior Court judge learned of the violation, he disqualified the witnesses.

Weinberg’s lawyer, Allan Browne, says that after the discovery snafu, Skadden, Arps should have informed his client and removed itself from the case.

Attorney Max Blecher represents Rothman and attorney Darrel J. Hieber, partners in Skadden, Arps. He called Weinberg’s allegations against the firm “a tissue of lies.”

Blecher contends that Weinberg knew about the error all along and now is trying to extract a huge settlement.

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IN CONTEMPT: A judge in Santa Monica Superior Court has found film producer Jon Peters in contempt of court in connection with his long-running dispute with the Beverly Park Homeowners Assn. over renovations to his five-acre property in the gated enclave above Beverly Hills.

Peters, who co-chaired Sony Pictures in the late 1980s with Peter Guber, his producing partner on “Batman” and “Rain Man,” has until Feb. 6 to comply with Judge Richard Harris’ prior orders or face jail time or fines.

The association won a permanent injunction against Peters in October 1996, blocking him from making improvements to his property without approval from its Architectural Review Committee. Specifically, the points of contention involved a shed, a wall, some ficus trees and a stairway.

The judge found that Peters was “willfully disobedient” of his court order on five occasions. Of particular concern, the judge said, is the fill and drainage on one corner of the property, where the slope has been damaged by erosion and could affect neighboring homeowners.

“This is particularly important in view of the impending rainy season and the predicted El Nino storms,” Harris wrote, urging Peters to make corrections before the next court date. Lawyers on all sides had no comment.

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ACTING 101: During her stint on the witness stand at the “Melrose Place” trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, star Heather Locklear said good camouflage and sheer acting ability helped her pull off her role as a super-vixen, even with a baby on board. But anyone looking for acting tips went home disappointed.

Nathan Goldberg, attorney for Hunter Tylo, the actress suing the show’s producers for firing her after she got pregnant, asked Locklear to describe her acting techniques:

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t know how to put it into words. I just do it.”

“Do you think your talent as an actress has anything to do with your ability to play the role of Amanda Woodward?” Goldberg later queried.

“Damn right!” Locklear shot back as several women in the spectator’s section burst into applause.

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NONE OF OUR BUSINESS: Mike Polydoros is a real person--35 years old and employed in the entertainment industry. Mike “Squints” Palledorous is a character in the 1993 movie “The Sandlot” who bears an uncanny resemblance to pictures of Mike Polydoros as a youngster.

Polydoros sued the producers of “The Sandlot” and writer-director David Mickey Evans--a former classmate in elementary and high school--for invading his privacy with the Squints character.

The case was tossed out, but now Polydoros is taking his appeal to the state Supreme Court. It is being closely watched by Hollywood, where film studios traditionally have paid private citizens for rights to their stories.

Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Jack Newman, now retired, had ruled in dismissing the suit that the filmmakers were protected by their constitutional right to free speech. The 2nd District Court of Appeal recently upheld the ruling.

Lawyers representing the writer and producers have so far been successful in arguing that screenwriters have the right to draw from their life experiences for their fictitious works.

Polydoros’ lawyers, Tom Brackey and Jonathan Freund, say the courts’ decision has left a glitch in the law, giving ordinary citizens weaker privacy rights than those enjoyed by celebrities. The case is among several before the high court dealing with privacy issues.

As for the real Mike Polydoros, he shuns the spotlight.

“I was just sitting here doing my life, basically, and all of a sudden all of this gets thrust upon me,” he said.

“It’s not fair. It’s not right. You should have the right to choose,” he added. “I do my thing and that is it. You’re not going to see me on the cover of Time magazine or anything. I just want to be left alone.”

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SMOKE GETS IN THEIR EYES: The hazy blue cloud of cigarette smoke swirling around the curled lips of the jaded private eye has been a part of the Hollywood mystique. But there’s nothing glamorous about lung cancer. It killed John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and, most recently, Robert Mitchum.

Now, Hollywood’s trade and talent unions want to hold the tobacco industry accountable. Unions representing actors, directors, producers and other workers sued the major tobacco companies in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking to recover the costs of treating their members for diseases linked to smoking.

The unions, which include the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America, the Producers Health Plan and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, echo the claims of other unions that the tobacco industry concealed the dangers of smoking and manipulated the level of nicotine in cigarettes to guarantee addiction.

The lengthy complaint adds a Hollywood twist: It alleges that the tobacco companies used the movies to glamorize smoking and push tobacco products, even when they knew about the health risks of their products. The suit seeks an injunction to counter the earlier message by funding public education and programs to help smokers quit. And it asks the tobacco companies to disclose their research into the health consequences and addictiveness of nicotine.

Spokesmen for the tobacco industry could not be reached.

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Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this column.