Beasley heirs dispute the lawyer's estate

In death as in life, feisty lawyer James E. Beasley Sr. has stirred a courthouse fracas.

The renowned malpractice and libel lawyer died in 2004, leaving an estate valued at $59 million, including two vintage P-51 fighter planes. He also left behind five children from two marriages, and bequeathed each child a slice of his fortune with one caveat: Any heir who challenged the will in court would be disinherited.

Yet nearly four years later, Beasley's children are waging a legal battle in Montgomery County Orphans' Court over control of the estate.

No heir has moved for disinheritance - so far - but the court fight has exposed a rift between the three well-heeled children of Beasley's second wife and the two daughters of his first wife, whose mother divorced Beasley before his legal career brought him riches.

The two older children contend that the two younger Beasleys who are serving as estate executors "conspired to loot" $8.5 million, including the airplanes, from a fortune that should be equally split.

"We were not unknown [to each other] at all, which makes it more difficult," said Nancy Beasley, a daughter from the first marriage who lives in Secane. "It's a very sad state of affairs."

The patriarch earned his millions after decades in the upper reaches of the Philadelphia bar, winning immense verdicts for his clients in complex medical-malpractice cases. He was not shy about his skills. Once, for a magazine story titled "Courtroom Cowboy," he was photographed standing in boots atop his desk in the Beasley Building at 12th and Walnut Streets.

He also won two major libel verdicts against The Inquirer; one was ultimately dismissed and the other settled. And he scored a $907 million judgment against fugitive hippie and "Unicorn Killer" Ira Einhorn.

"He was great at mastering the facts in a case and marshaling an argument," recalled personal-injury lawyer Shanin Specter, who was a member of Beasley's firm for more than a decade. "And he was a wonderful examiner, and conveyed sincerity and purpose."

He also collected World War II fighter planes, which he flew at air shows. A year before his death at 78, Beasley drew still more attention by winning a $104 million judgment against Osama bin Laden and others on behalf of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - though, as with the Einhorn judgment, Beasley died without seeing that sum paid.

But all that happened after Beasley divorced his first wife, Gloria, with whom he fathered two children after returning home from World War II Navy service. When Beasley remarried, in 1958, he was just two years out of the Temple University School of Law and earning $6,000.

The ensuing decades gave him sufficient riches that, after he pledged $20 million, Temple's law school was renamed in 1999 the Beasley School of Law.

Under his will, the rest of the estate goes into a trust to benefit his widow, Helen, until her death. Then the money is to be parceled equally among the five children.

The oldest two are uneasy about the situation. Nancy Beasley and Lynn Hayes are in their early 60s; their stepmother, who divorced Beasley in 1984 and remarried him in 2003, is 77 and in good health, court filings say. (Their mother, Gloria, is not mentioned in the will.)

The two have millions coming - if they outlive Helen Beasley. In the meantime, court filings indicate they live middle-class lives. Nancy Beasley makes $48,700 a year as an auto-body shop's office manager. Her sister is an interchange manager on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and makes $70,800 a year.

After their father's will was filed, the sisters each asked for a $1.2 million loan - to be repaid, with interest, from their eventual inheritance.

According to a 2007 accounting, the estate was worth $39 million after expenditures including tax payments, other bequests, and the balance of his pledge to Temple.

But the sisters' request for advances was rebuffed, for legal reasons, by the estate's executors - their half-siblings James Beasley Jr. and Pamela J. Beasley.

"The man left $20 million to Temple University," said lawyer William Halligan, who made the formal loan request for the sisters. "You'd think that his daughters could get something."

The three children of Beasley's second wife all have Ivy League backgrounds and, by all appearances, live more affluent lives than their half-siblings.

James Beasley Jr., who leads the Beasley law firm, is a doctor and a lawyer with University of Pennsylvania degrees; Pamela Beasley is a child psychiatrist in Boston and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School; and Kim Schmucki, who has a bachelor's degree from Penn, is a teacher at a private preschool and married to a corporate lawyer. The case file did not disclose their incomes.

Through Hara Jacobs, attorney for the younger heirs, James Beasley Jr. declined to be interviewed for this article. Efforts to reach other Beasley siblings were unsuccessful.

After their loan request was denied, the sisters went to court to have their half-siblings removed as executors, saying in court filings that the estate was being drained before they could see a dime.

They retained lawyer Keith Erbstein, who has his own Beasley story.

Erbstein practiced law with James Beasley Sr. for more than 30 years, but was forced out of the firm in 2005 after James Beasley Jr. took it over. He sued his ex-employers over legal fees, and the dispute was sent to an arbitrator in 2007, court records show.

In the estate case, the filings prepared by Erbstein allege "a pattern of waste and self-dealing" by the younger half-siblings.

Among the allegations: The son's purchase of four of the father's planes for $1.83 million - allegedly "greatly below" a claimed market value of about $5 million - was allowed by an improper interpretation of the will. James Beasley Jr., who like his father flies the vintage airplanes as a hobby, has defended the sale as proper.

Between disputed transactions and what Erbstein wrote were "schemes to defraud the estate," the sisters contend, $8.5 million has already been sapped. They want their half-siblings out as executors.

"Our case basically seeks to preserve the funds in the estate," Erbstein said, "so that eventually, when the second wife dies, there will be funds left in the estate to distribute to my clients."

Attorneys for the younger set of Beasleys say Erbstein is using the sisters' case as a vehicle for his "obsession": cracking open fiscal records from the Beasley law firm for evidence in his claim for fees.

In court filings, Erbstein denies that he has a conflict of interest, but the allegation is still being pressed.

"Mr. Erbstein and his clients are, to put it bluntly, fighting over the same pot of gold," Jacobs said.

The case is due back in court for a hearing July 11.