4 Clients Whose Estates Enriched James D. Gunderson : Emerald Mary Sully
In 1983, Emerald Mary Sully was a 76-year-old widow who was experiencing the ravages of aging. Sully’s husband had died earlier that year. That September, she was in a hospital suffering from the malady that comes with old age--senile dementia.
Records show that her attorney, James D. Gunderson, told an Orange County Superior Court judge that Sully was “unable to pay her bills or manage her assets, and cannot make arrangements for her personal care.”
Gunderson’s statements were supported by a sworn declaration from a doctor that Sully was “confused, disoriented, irrational and possibly delusional.”
The probate court, which routinely verifies such claims before appointing a conservator, sent an investigator to visit Sully in her Laguna Hills nursing home. Not only could she not remember her birthday or her address, wrote Investigator Richard Joy in an Oct. 17, 1983, report, but “she thinks President (Gerald) Ford is the current president of the United States.”
Marjorie Wilson, Sully’s sister-in-law who lives in Toronto, said she remembers placing telephone calls to Sully’s nursing home to inquire about her health.
“The nurse would hand her the phone and (Sully) would say ‘Hello, goodby,” not a word more, and hang up the phone immediately,” Wilson said. “She was going downhill, her mind wasn’t working properly.”
But five months after Gunderson was appointed conservator, he claimed that Sully had recovered enough to dictate a new will specifying that he (Gunderson) should receive “all of my shares of AT&T; (or the successors in the interest of AT&T;) that I own at the time of my death.”
Three months after the will was written, American Telephone & Telegraph Co. broke up to form a group of separate companies known as the Baby Bells. The value of Gunderson’s gift quadrupled to $225,000.
Gunderson’s bequest was disclosed after he filed a petition to probate Sully’s will upon her death on Nov. 14, 1986.
Diane Leitch, one of Sully’s nieces who was to receive two-fifths of the widow’s $730,000 estate, contested the will in court. Leitch, who lives in Manitoba, Canada, produced a copy of her aunt’s earlier will which did not name Gunderson as a beneficiary. She alleged that the lawyer “committed fraud,” and pointed out that he had failed to inform the court that Sully’s “last will” was written only after he was appointed conservator.
Wilson said she and her husband, William, did not join Leitch’s lawsuit because they feared losing their two-fifths share of the estate under a “no contest” provision of the will that would deprive any beneficiary of his or her share if that person challenged any part of it.
“I think we had enough of the whole thing,” said Wilson, 81.
In an interview with The Times, Gunderson acknowledged paying Leitch $60,000 to drop her court action, saying “we gave them the equivalent of what it would take to defend it.”
The California Supreme Court has ruled that anything more than a “modest” bequest to a lawyer preparing a will raises questions of impropriety, and said the lawyer should send the client to another lawyer in those circumstances. The Supreme Court justices commented that the $21,000 an attorney inherited in the case before them was a “substantial gift.”
Gunderson told The Times he did not send Sully to another lawyer because he considered her AT&T; stock “a rather insignificant gift.”
His daughter and law partner, Linda Gunderson, said “it’s not a requirement” that an attorney who receives a bequest from a client send that person to an independent attorney to prepare the will. “It helps in a will contest, but it’s not a requirement,” she said.
