BUSINESSMAN Gordon Lambert made 31 wills between 1979 and 2003, an average of more than one a year, a High Court case in Dundalk has heard.
Relatives of Mr Lambert, an art collector and former managing director of Jacob’s Biscuits, have asked the court to strike down the will he made in 2003 and the condition disqualifying any beneficiary who challenged the will.
Mr Lambert’s nephew Mark Lambert (53), Rathdown Park, Greystones, Co Wicklow, and June Lambert, Pembroke Lane, Dublin, claim that Mr Lambert’s friend Anthony Lyons had exercised undue influence on Mr Lambert.
They brought proceedings against the executors of Mr Lambert’s will, Mr Lyons, Churchtown, Dublin; Olive Beaumont, Heytesbury Lane, Dublin, who was a trustee of the Gordon Lambert collection and a senior curator at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, to which Mr Lambert had donated 310 paintings and sculptures; and Catherine Marshall, Kevin Street, Dublin.
The action against Ms Beaumont and Ms Marshall was solely in their capacity as executors and no allegation of undue pressure was being made against them.
James Gilhooley SC for the Lambert family said the estimated valuation of Mr Lambert’s house in Rathfarnham, Dublin in 2002 was €1.5 million and €2.25 million in August 2003 at the time of the will. In 2002 Mr Lyons’s share of the residue of the estate was €156,666 in 2002 and rose to €1,484,500 in August 2003, while the legacy to him increased from €200,000 to €250,000.
The house was eventually sold in 2007 for €4.5 million and Mr Lyons’s share was €3,611,000. Mr Gilhooley said “if there was undue influence, Mr Lyons benefits to a very substantial extent”.
Mr Lambert’s nephew told the court that he and his family had a very good relationship with his uncle but it was turned upside down after family members had Mr Lambert, who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, admitted to St James’s Hospital in September 2002.
His nephew said Mr Lyons phoned him the day afterwards. “I received a tirade of abuse in which he said he was going to sue my sister and my father [who was 93], he was a thief and trying to put him [Gordon] into a mental institution, that he was after Gordon’s money”, which he rejected out of hand. Mr Lyons rejects the claim.
Séamus Woulfe SC, for Ms Beaumont and Ms Marshall, said the late businessman made 31 wills between 1979 and 2003. He put it to Mr Lambert that his “surmising” that Mr Lyons had an undue influence on his uncle was largely because of the increased benefit in the will and its codicil to Mr Lyons “as opposed to the reduced benefit you received”. Mr Lambert thought his uncle was influenced by Mr Lyons because of a cap on his will and a condition that anyone who challenged it would be disinherited.
Mr Woulfe said Patricia Rickard-Clarke was Mr Lambert’s solicitor from 1983 until 2002 and dealt with 27 of his wills. Her evidence would be that Mr Lambert gave “clear and well-thought out instructions”.
