Deaths, Trusts and Estates

Dead Lawyer's Body -- Moved Twice Already -- Subject Of Cross-Border Custody Battle

A high-profile lawyer's remains have sparked a sad, long-running legal battle.

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John O'Quinn

John O’Quinn

Surely this is how every successful attorney wishes to be remembered: with contentious litigation over his remains after being disinterred and moved twice already. For a man once dubbed “King of Torts” by Forbes, transforming your own earthly remains into a seven-years-and-counting Bleak House battle is a shockingly meta tribute to the profession.

Texas attorney John O’Quinn died in a car accident in 2009 and threw his estate into a bitter battle between the woman he’d lived with for years, Darla Lexington, and his aunt and cousin who claim to be his rightful heirs, writing off Lexington as “nothing but a live-in mistress.” Not to be ageist here, but this isn’t some Anna Nicole Smith marrying a 90-year-old situation — O’Quinn would be 74 today and Lexington is 64 — so throwing around rhetorically charged terms like “live-in mistress” seems a bit much. Still, O’Quinn and Lexington never did get married, and if you’re going to go that route, you have to accept that things are going to get a little sticky when one of you dies.

Just how rich was O’Quinn? The man collected cars. And you’d expect the prize centerpiece of such a collection to be a 1966 Miura or something, but no, it was a “plain grey 1975 Ford Escort GL” that Pope John Paul II was owned. O’Quinn was basically the wealthier George Costanza bragging about his Jon Voight car.

In any event, O’Quinn bought a 5,000-acre ranch near Wimberley, Texas and intended his final resting place to be a mausoleum on the premises built for himself and Darla. His aunt and cousin — who inherited his estate by the terms of his will — had no problem with this “until it came time for the estate to sell the ranch about five years ago.” That’s when they hauled up his remains and moved them to another spot closer to his aunt and cousin. But that became to inconvenient for them and in 2014, they decided to move him again, this time to a “cemetery just off a Louisiana state highway, near a fence and a parking lot.” Probably not the dying wish of a multimillionaire lawyer who bought a 5,000-acre ranch.

What is it with screwing with bodily remains these days? This is the second wild tale rooted in misplacing remains that we’ve recently covered

Darla Lexington has sued O’Quinn’s relatives to have his remains returned at least to their most recent former home in Texas, the state where he lived and worked. His relatives remain intransigent:

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Carol O’Quinn said she and John were very close, and she visits his grave from time to time with her mother.

“She can sue all she wants but she has no grounds for the reburial,” she said. “I’m sorry she feels like she has to do something like this, but I had the legal right and I felt strongly about it.”

The dead man we’re supposedly honoring seemed to feel strongly about being left on his estate, but what are you gonna do?

Fight ensues over body of famed Houston lawyer [Houston Chronicle]

Earlier: John O’Quinn Dies in Car Accident
Lawyer Threatens Federal Receiver, Earns One-Way Trip To Sanctiontown

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