Doris Duke’s Butler Asks Judge Handling Her Will to Step Aside

After the apparent collapse of settlement talks in the fight over Doris Duke’s $1.2-billion estate, lawyers for Bernard Lafferty--the heiress’ former butler who was named her executor in her last will--filed court papers Monday asking the judge who is hearing the case to step aside.

U.S. Trust Co. of New York, the bank that Lafferty brought in as co-executor, joined the motion to remove Surrogate Judge Eve M. Preminger “to avoid the appearance of impropriety” because last year she replaced both the former butler and the bank as unfit “without ever seeing Mr. Lafferty or hearing him speak.”

The high-stakes move, which risks alienating the judge, came as several attorneys in the case said that Preminger had refused to approve a proposed compromise that just last week seemed on the verge of ending the two-year fight. The court battle has tied up what is destined to be one of the nation’s largest charities.

Under the proposed settlement, Lafferty would have stepped down as co-executor and taken one of five seats on the board of Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which will dispense Duke’s fortune. Dr. Harry B. Demopoulos, the New York physician who has been challenging Duke’s last will, also would have gotten a seat in return for withdrawing his claim that the heiress was incompetent when she signed the document in a Los Angeles hospital bed months before her 1993 death.

Attorneys in the case did not detail the judge’s objections to the proposed deal.

The settlement talks had been pushed by the New York attorney general after the state’s top court ruled that Preminger improperly removed Lafferty and U.S. Trust without a hearing into allegations that the former butler went on spending sprees and drinking binges.

Goldman reported from New York and Lieberman from Los Angeles.