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By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
MIAMI — In a well-heeled community not far from Palm Beach, where some of the world’s wealthiest people gather every winter to watch and play world-class polo, notoriety is not a welcome guest.
This is especially true when a scandal encircles one of its own — the Texan who helped revitalize the town of Wellington and its polo culture.
Two years ago, John Goodman, the multimillionaire founder of the polo club here, got behind the wheel of his black Bentley convertible after a night of bar hopping and smashed into the car of a young man driving to visit his mother. The man’s crumpled Hyundai flipped and landed in a drainage ditch.
Investigators say that Mr. Goodman was drunk and speeding when he ran a stop sign, and then fled the scene of the accident on foot, waiting an hour to call 911. The young man, Scott Wilson, a 23-year-old engineering graduate, lay unconscious in his car. He drowned in the early morning of Feb. 12, 2010.
It is a devastating picture, one that Wellington, with its rambling horse farms and equestrian pedigree, will be forced to revisit soon. On March 6, Mr. Goodman is expected to go to trial on charges of manslaughter while driving under the influence, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of a crash. He faces up to 30 years in prison.
Mr. Goodman, 48, the founder of International Polo Club Palm Beach, is also being sued for punitive damages by Mr. Wilson’s parents in a case that has taken a Kafkaesque twist as lawyers continue to wrangle over Mr. Goodman’s millions.
“There is a constant chatter about this,” said Kenneth Braddick, a Wellington resident who founded a Web site about dressage. “It’s a very small, insular community, and he is very well known to everyone in it.”
The latest events in the civil case bewildered even the jaded. Mr. Goodman has legally adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend. And while the adoption of an adult is not uncommon, the adoption of a girlfriend certainly is.
By becoming Mr. Goodman’s daughter, his girlfriend, Heather Hutchins, will share in a trust worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Mr. Goodman’s two minor children. The adoption permits Ms. Hutchins, who lives in Atlanta with her own two children, to begin receiving yearly payments of $250,000 to $5 million, court documents show.
In this way, Mr. Goodman, who is unhappy with the firm managing the trust, will have greater oversight of the money if he goes to prison, or is otherwise indisposed, as his lawyers have said. They assert that he will not have access to the money.
Opposing lawyers disagree, calling it an outright money grab.
“Our imagination wasn’t good enough to come up this one,” Chris Searcy, a lawyer who represents Scott Wilson’s mother, Lili, said in court.
But the adoption also could make at least one-third of the trust fair game in the lawsuit; initially, the judge in the civil case had ruled the trust off limits because it was set up for Mr. Goodman’s two teenage children, who cannot access the funds until they are 35. The adoption of a 42-year-old girlfriend, though, proved a game changer, and the judge is reconsidering. The civil trial is scheduled for the end of March.
“This adult adoption in my view basically puts me in the legal twilight zone,” Judge Glenn Kelley of Palm Beach Circuit Court said at a hearing in his courtroom, calling it “surreal.”
The adoption, which opposing lawyers call a sham, is now being challenged by Mr. Goodman’s minor children, who are represented by a guardian. The adoption took place in October but did not come to light until recently. The trust was set up by Mr. Goodman and his ex-wife, Isla Carroll Goodman, whose family shares in the Exxon oil fortune.
“I know that the guardian who was appointed as of that time was not told of the adoption,” said Joseph L. Rebak, the lawyer who is challenging the adoption in Miami.
As for the Miami judge who approved the adoption, lawyers say it is likely that he did not know that Ms. Hutchins was Mr. Goodman’s girlfriend.
At the moment, though, Mr. Goodman has to contend with his criminal case.
Investigators say Mr. Goodman’s blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit three hours after the accident. They say cellphone records show one call, to his assistant, around the time of the crash. Mr. Goodman left the scene of the accident on foot and showed up at the trailer of a horse lover, where he used the phone an hour or so later, first to call Ms. Hutchins and then to call 911, investigators say.
Sunday was the second anniversary of Mr. Wilson’s death.
Polo and equestrian season are in full swing again now in Wellington. Bentleys and Rolls-Royces sidle up to one another in valet lots. Champagne-sipping on polo fields transforms into clubhouse celebrations, which travel into elegant neighborhood watering holes. Charity events compete for calendar space.
At least in winter, Wellington pulses with celebrity equestrians and polo players, including Georgina Bloomberg, the daughter of New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, and Jessica Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen’s daughter.
A powerhouse in the equestrian world, the town attracts Olympians and top-tier competitions as well as world-class polo. Mr. Goodman, a shy but affable Texan whose father built a heating and air-conditioning empire in Texas, injected millions into the polo club, luring the sport’s biggest names and serving as the patron — an amateur who hires professional players — of his own prize-winning team.
Out on bail, he continues to attend splashy events at his polo club and the equestrian center next door. But people in Wellington wonder whether the polo club will continue to thrive without Mr. Goodman’s interest and his money — and that of the trust.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/us/in-florida-polo-country-a-tale-of-death-money-and-adoption.html?scp=1&sq=In polo country&st=cse
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