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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Hawai'i lawyer mired in billionaire heirs case

By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Seven years ago, a seaplane carrying billionaire businessman Larry Hillblom crashed in the ocean off Saipan, generating a tsunami of conflicting legal claims that are still buffeting the courts in the Philippines and Hawai'i.

Fight over the Hillblom estate

Key players in the battle for the estate of DHL co-founder Larry Hillblom:

Benjamin Cassiday III, lawyer, member of prominent kama'aina family, represents three children who claim to be heirs to the Larry Hillblom fortune.

Larry Hillblom, co-founder of DHL Worlwide Express, died at age 52 in plane crash off Sapian in 1995. Numerous children from South Pacific and Asia claimed to be heirs to his billion-dollar estate.

John Perkin, Honolulu lawyer, once a friend and legal associate of Cassiday, now suing him in aftermath of Hillblom estate litigation.

Jose "Joey" Marfori, Philippines private investigator who says he assisted Cassiday in locating potential heirs to Hillblom estate. Now suing Cassiday in Philippines.

Sidney Quintal, Honolulu lawyer representing Cassiday in civil suit here.

Co-founder of the DHL Worldwide Express air cargo business, Hillblom died with no legal heirs. But his penchant for bedding young — some very young — women around the Pacific had lawyers and investigators searching places such as Palau and Vietnam for children who could lay claim to his considerable fortune.

The putative heirs' claims were complicated by the fact that Hillblom's body was never recovered, so his DNA was unavailable for matching with samples from his supposed children.

But analysis of some of the claimants' DNA showed that four children — one in Vietnam, one in Saipan and two in the Philippines — were related to one another. That scientific evidence, coupled with evidence such as photographs or letters showing that their mothers had known Hillblom, gave such weight to their claims that each of the four received about $50 million from the Hillblom Estate.

Those four in turn paid lesser amounts of money to other children who claimed to be Hillblom heirs but lacked the scientific or documentary evidence to substantiate their claims. In return for the settlement payments — some as high as $4.6 million — claims against the Hillblom Estate were dropped.

Honolulu lawyers Benjamin Cassiday III and John Perkin have represented children who claim to be Hillblom offspring.

But the two lawyers, who were friends and at one time shared office space, are now bitter opponents in court.

Perkin's law firm is suing Cassiday, claiming it financed one Hillblom estate claim case in the Philippines and is owed more than $180,000.

Cassiday denies that he owes any money, saying Perkin's firm or Perkin individually already received $1 million in fees and expense payments in the Hillblom case. The case against Cassiday is set for trial later this year.

Cassiday, son of retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Benjamin Cassiday Jr. and nephew of former Campbell Estate trustee Paul Cassiday, has other legal problems connected to the Hillblom litigation.

He has been sued and arrested on fraud charges in the Philippines based on complaints by Jose "Joey" Marfori, an investigator who says he found three Hillblom children whom Cassiday represented.

Marfori alleges that the three children, Honeylynn, Alexandra and Jeril Nonan, have received less than $20,000 of $4.6 million paid to settle their claims.

Sidney Quintal, a Honolulu attorney representing Cassiday, said much of the settlement money has been tied up by court proceedings in Saipan and the Philippines.

He said the $19,000 that has been spent on behalf of the children, "is a fair amount of money in the Philippines, equal to $50,000 or $100,000 in this country."

Cassiday was arrested on fraud charges in January in Angeles City, a northern suburb of Manila, because "Joey Marfori got a friendly prosecutor to file the charges," Quintal said. "Marfori's got a lot of political connections and this kind of thing isn't that unusual in the Philippines."

According to news accounts from the Philippines, Cassiday has been free on bail since the arrest but can't leave the country until the case against him is resolved.

Quintal said that's not accurate.

Cassiday "has been back to Honolulu at least twice since January," Quintal said.

Cassiday last year settled another Hillblom-related lawsuit filed against him in federal court here by a San Francisco law firm. The plaintiff in that case alleged that Cassiday reneged on a fee-splitting agreement for representation of the three Nonan children in their claims against the Hillblom estate.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Another Hillblom-related lawsuit filed against Cassiday in U.S. District Court in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands resulted in a $93,000 judgment against Cassiday last year. Cassiday is appealing that decision.

According to court records here, Cassiday has offered to settle the Marianas case and the Perkin lawsuit here only if misconduct charges pending against him in the Hawai'i Supreme Court's Office of Disciplinary Counsel are dismissed.

The nature of the misconduct charges is not specified, but the Perkin suit alleges that Cassiday promised to pay 10 percent of any money recovered in the Nonan case to Marfori and another man. That kind of "finder's fee" arrangement with a nonlawyer would be a violation of the code of conduct governing Hawai'i lawyers.

Cassiday and Perkin originally represented the three Nonan children, but Perkin later dropped out of the case. He subsequently represented a Vietnamese claimant who was proved by DNA tests not to be related to the other Hillblom heirs.

Perkin's client did receive a settlement payment of undisclosed size in return for dropping all claims against the estate.

The Nonan children never underwent DNA testing, although Hillblom financially supported their mother, Jocelyn Nonan, for eight years. Hillblom met Jocelyn Nonan when she was 14 years old, working as a waitress in Baguio City, according to court records.

The Nonan children's interests are protected by a guardian appointed by the Philippines courts — former Philippines Vice President Salvador Laurel.

Under the terms of a settlement agreement hammered out by Cassiday, the Nonan children received $4.6 million to drop their claims to be Hillblom heirs.

Laurel "has a bunch of the money in trust for the children," Quintal said. "It's for their education and is being held in trust for them."

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2447.