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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A pair of Howard Hughes associates are trying to discredit a new witness for a Utah man who insists he once rescued the reclusive billionaire from a ditch and was cheated of a share of his estate.
The two men, who were beneficiaries of the Hughes fortune, are asking a federal judge in Salt Lake City to throw out Melvin Dummar's latest lawsuit, filed in June.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball will hear arguments Thursday.
Dummar is suing Hughes cousin William Lummis and Frank Gay, who was chief operating officer of Summa Corp., which controlled Hughes' major assets.
He claims that Hughes left him $156 million in a handwritten will. In 1978, after a seven-month trial, a Las Vegas jury declared the will was a fake. Witnesses said Hughes never left the Desert Inn between 1966 and 1970.
Dummar now is looking for another day in court.
This time he has a new ally, Guido Roberto Deiro, a pilot who said he routinely flew Hughes to rural Nevada brothels -- and did so on the night in 1967 that Dummar insists he rescued Hughes from a roadside ditch.
Deiro only recently came forward with his account, chronicled in a book by a former FBI agent.
"You can't have two bites at the same apple," said Gay's attorney, Peggy Tomsic.
Dummar's claims of racketeering, fraud and unjust enrichment are speculative and so old they're barred by statutes of limitation, she said.
"The bottom line is my guy didn't do anything," Tomsic said.
In court papers seeking to throw out Deiro's affidavit, she said Dummar's claims are impossible to verify, Deiro can't be certain his passenger was Hughes, and the pilot got so drunk that he "passed out" at the brothel.
Another attorney, Randy Dryer, is making some of the same arguments on behalf of Lummis, the main beneficiary of Hughes' estate.
"The main thrust of our motion is that this is too little, too late," Dryer said. "There's got to be some finality in things that happened almost 30 years ago."
Hughes never left a will accepted by any court, although dozens of purported wills surfaced after his death in 1976. A number of women also claimed to have been secretly married to him.
His estate was divided up in probate court. Because there were no direct relatives, the fortune was given mostly to cousins, some of them many times removed.
Dummar, a 61-year-old frozen-meat delivery man, has an unlisted phone number in northern Utah's Brigham City and could not be reached Monday.
But in an interview, Deiro said he believes Dummar's story of coming across Hughes in a ditch six miles from the Cottontail Ranch in late December 1967. Deiro said that account fit the peculiar circumstances of the trip.
Deiro, a 68-year-old Las Vegas businessman, said he was a trusted aide who piloted Hughes in a Cessna four-seater for secret trysts with his favorite prostitute.
He said he fell asleep from exhaustion, not alcohol, although he did have a few holiday drinks while waiting for Hughes in the kitchen of a brothel.
Deiro said he can counter the depiction of Hughes as a shut-in by testifying Hughes had ways of leaving and entering the Desert Inn unnoticed.
Recalling that night nearly 40 years ago, Deiro said when he awoke at the brothel, his boss was nowhere to be found. He believes Hughes accepted a ride from another customer and got "trick-rolled" six miles away.
Deiro said he never met Dummar, doesn't have a financial stake in the lawsuit, and wasn't paying attention when the first trial made headlines in 1977-78.
He said he became aware of the self-described Good Samaritan two years ago while reading a newspaper story that quoted Dummar as complaining about the trial's outcome.
Deiro said the fact he doesn't have a "pat" answer for every part of his own story shows it's genuine.
With Hughes gone from the brothel, Deiro said he flew 150 miles back to Las Vegas thinking that he would be fired. Instead, he was promoted, eventually leading a regional carrier, Golden West Airlines, for Hughes.
Deiro said he is wealthy and wouldn't risk his reputation if he didn't believe Dummar.
Hughes, he said, "put me on the road to riches."
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
