New Legal Twist Entangles Heiress’s Will : Courts: Lawyers for former butler who was named co-executor of Doris Duke’s estate protest that a court-appointed investigator has overstepped his duties.

Lawyers for Bernard Lafferty, the butler named as chief executor under the last will of Doris Duke, have complained to a New York judge that a court-appointed investigator is illegally expanding his authority by examining more than whether the tobacco heiress died of natural causes.

In challenging the mandate of Richard Kuh, Lafferty’s lawyers allege that he has moved beyond the scope of his appointment by investigating the validity of the will itself--specifically whether the 80-year-old Duke was competent or unduly influenced when she signed it in April, 1993, while a patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The lawyers’ complaints, contained in a letter to Surrogate’s Court Judge Eve M. Preminger, provide a first look inside the inquiry that could determine the direction of a $1.1-billion charitable foundation, one of the nation’s largest.

Although Duke died Oct. 28, 1993, in her Beverly Hills home, the legal fight is being waged in New York because the will was probated there. It named Lafferty as her executor, along with the United States Trust Co. of New York, and called for Lafferty to receive a $5-million executor’s fee plus a lifetime annuity of $500,000 a year.

Lafferty, who still lives in the gated hillside estate where Duke died, also is slated to help direct the several foundations created under the will.

One of Duke’s former physicians, who was named executor in an earlier will, has challenged the document, however, and the judge appointed Kuh to investigate after one of the nurses who cared for the heiress in her last days charged in court papers that she “did not die of natural causes” and succumbed to a “massive sedation regime.” Kuh is a former Manhattan district attorney.

In addition, two former employees, a chef and housekeeper, alleged that Duke was incompetent when she signed amendments to her will in the spring of 1993.

Lawyers for Lafferty and Duke’s physicians have strongly denied the allegations, saying she clearly was terminally ill. They have labeled the legal challenges as attempts to extort money from her estate and slander Lafferty, whom the heiress first named as a co-executor in documents signed a year before the will currently being contested.

In their letter to Preminger, the lawyers reveal that Kuh has hired a major accounting firm to scrutinize the estate’s financial affairs both before and after Duke’s death. He also has interviewed employees of the trust company and the estate offices in Somerville, N.J., has hired a physician as a consultant to evaluate Duke’s medical records and has even examined sealed boxes in the closets of servants at some of Duke’s five homes, according to the letter.

Kuh is scheduled to give a progress report to Preminger on Monday, and Lafferty’s lawyers said they expect him to request more time to complete his inquiry.

In protesting Kuh’s activities, the lawyers said they did not believe the judge’s Jan. 20 order vested him with authority to investigate allegations that Duke “lacked testamentary capacity or was unduly influenced.”

Lafferty’s lawyers said he had cooperated with the investigator by supplying him with a “multitude of documents” and giving Price Waterhouse, Kuh’s accounting firm, access to all the estate’s records.

“Indeed, the estate’s normal accounting and business functions have literally ground to a halt in order to accommodate Mr. Kuh’s accountants,” the lawyers said.

In the letter, delivered to the judge Wednesday, they said the investigator even intends to question “merchants where Mr. Lafferty has shopped,” apparently following up allegations from the former employees that, as Duke lay ill, her butler went on lavish shopping sprees at antique, jewelry and clothing stores in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

Raymond Dowd, a Manhattan lawyer representing the former workers who made the allegations against Lafferty, said he was “shocked they (Lafferty’s lawyers) are questioning Kuh’s judgment.”

Goldman reported from New York and Lieberman from Los Angeles.