JOHNSON V. JOHNSON

By Barbara Goldsmith

With the extraordinary investigative acumen and sensitive narrative skills that informed her best-selling Little Gloria . . . Happy at Last, Barbara Goldsmith now gives us the most sensational case of a contested will in American history—weaving a hypnotic tale of vast wealth and moral corruption.
 
When J. Seward Johnson, the pharmaceutical heir, died in 1983 at the age of eighty-seven, his six children (each of whom was already in possession of an immense fortune) were outraged to learn that he had willed his entire $500-million estate to their stepmother Basia—a woman forty-two years Seward’s junior, a Polish refugee who had once worked as a chambermaid in his household. They came to believe that Basia had used undue influence to “enchant” their father, prying his fortune away from him and turning him against his own children. They wanted “justice.” The legal battle that followed spawned a seventeen-week-long trial, the involvement of 210 lawyers (some of whose behavior was legally and ethically questionable), $24 million in legal fees, and public disclosures of the often scandalous details of the lives of many of the parties involved, including attempted suicide, drug addiction, and accusations of a murder plot.
 
Going beyond the courtroom itself, Goldsmith delves into the family’s past and present, demonstrating that, from the start, the poisonous effects of overwhelming wealth were a tacit but powerfully felt subtext to the proceedings. From her insider’s position, she reveals the true Johnson legacy—one of profound emotional damage. In their own voices Seward’s children, his first wife, relatives, friends, employees, and Basia herself express their thoughts and feelings with a startling degree of frankness, revealing a past of incest, malignant neglect, and betrayal. Through this deepening of the story, Goldsmith has been able to elucidate the profoundly complex reasons why each of the Johnsons believed that what was most emphatically at stake was not financial remuneration but emotional reparation.
 
Throughout the four-month trial, Goldsmith (who researched the case for over a year and examined thousands of pages of documentation) was in constant attendance, and she tells the dramatic story of what occurred in spellbinding detail. We see the contesting parties, their innumerable lawyers, and the trial’s remarkable judge, Marie Lambert (“part Portia, part Tugboat Annie”), playing out their roles in a courtroom packed with press and spectators, and rife with animosity, mistrust, and uncontrolled emotions (which erupted into a near-riot and death threats against the judge). Goldsmith illuminates how and why, as the trial progressed, it was transmuted almost entirely into a battle among lawyers, about lawyers, and for lawyers. She provides a masterful and devastating indictment of American law and lawyers, seen here as an out-of-control juggernaut fueled by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of money.
 
Family drama, courtroom drama, explosive psychological drama, a trenchant and sometimes shocking portrayal of lawyers at work today—Johnson v. Johnson is a brilliant synthesis of the legal, the social, and the human aspects of a society in disarray.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307800367

Reviews for JOHNSON V. JOHNSON

[ecw0647 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading this book is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We know it’s painful and really shouldn’t watch, yet the grinding and twisting of the family members, bashing each other and causing pain and suffering to each other, has a salacious interest that draws the reader in for more. It’s truly a Bleak House.Americans suffer from the conflict of two myths: the lottery get-rich-quick syndrome versus the Puritan ethic of hard work and avoidance of luxury. The result of this struggle means that we love to see the rich suffer and be unhappy despite, or especially because, of all that money.This Johnson family will battle presents a good case for why inheritances over, say $1,000,000, should be taxed at 100%. Not to mention a lesson in why there should be better oversight over the trustees. It’s a sad story of kids fighting over huge amounts of money they have done nothing to earn. The whole idea that a will could be successfully contested makes a mockery of the legal system. Johnson had a battery of lawyers drawing up the 48 page will. The children, after his death, didn’t like the result so it was challenged in court. It wasn’t fair,” was their argument. The lawyers didn't care, they were making millions off the battle. So why bother with a will if a court can intervene and change how the money is allocated? Just go straight to probate and let the court decide. Or, as I noted above, tax it all at 100%.The trusts were set up in a rather bizarre fashion so that the children were skipped and the benefits devolved onto the grandchildren. They were also designed in such a way that control of the huge corporation remained in the hands of the family and not stockholders which provided substantial tax benefits. The trustees were virtually untouchable and exerted control at the expense of everyone but themselves, making themselves quite rich.The book is structured in an unusual way, laced with snippets of interviews with the family members, often contradicting each other, always hostile. It sometimes feels disjointed with little sense of connectedness or linear feeling. Lots of interesting detail, but little of substance. You feel empty, sad, bewildered, and not a little angry at the selfishness and stupidity of nearly everyone.The first part of the book is background, family history, setting the stage for the longest trial relating to a will in US history. When the elder J. Seward Johnson died in 1983, he left the bulk of his estate to Basia Johnson, his most recent wife, who was 42 years his junior.The trial occupies the last section and here the anomalies were most apparent. One juror was heard to exclaim how she couldn't live on $12 a day and what was she to do. She was being asked to sit in judgement on a family, the individual members of which had a net worth of $50 to $100 million each and were fighting over the distribution of another $500 million. In the end, the trial, which lasted 17 weeks before it was settled, was hog heaven for the more than 200 lawyers who participated and who shared more than $24 million in legal fees. There were over 300,000 pages of documents. Had it gone to the jury (many of whom reported being totally appalled at the time they had spent for very little money when` a settlement ultimately resulted) no matter who had won, there would have been decades of appeals until, most likely, all of the inheritance had been transferred from the defendants and plaintiffs to the lawyers. Even lawyers who observed the case thought it represented a nadir of American trial law. I would disagree. We haven’t seen the bottom yet.Audiobook that’s good shower listening. The dirt can be washed off immediately.