Paperback: When J. Seward Johnson, the pharmaceutical heir, died in 1983 at the age of eighty-seven, his six children (each of whom was already in possession of an immense fortune) were outraged to learn that he had willed his entire $500 million estate to their stepmother Basia, a woman forty-two years Seward’s junior, a Polish refugee who had once worked as a chambermaid in his household.
They came to believe that Basia had used undue influence to "enchant" their father, prying his fortune away from him and turning him against his own children. They wanted "justice". The legal battle that followed spawned a seventeen-week-long trial, the involvement of 210 lawyers (some of whose behavior was legally and ethically questionable), $24 million in legal fees, and public disclosures of the often scandalous details of the lives of many of the parties involved, including attempted suicide, drug addition, and accusations of a murder plot.
Going beyond the courtroom itself, Goldsmith delves into the family’s past and present, demonstrating that, from the start, the poisonous effects of overwhelming wealth were a tacit but powerfully felt subtext to the proceedings.
From her insider’s position, she reveals the true Johnson legacy - one of profound emotional damage.
In their own voices Seward’s children, his first wife, relatives, friends, employees, and Basia herself express their thoughts and feelings with a startling degree of frankness, revealing a past of incest, malignant neglect, and betrayal. Through this deepening of the story, Goldsmith had been able to elucidate the profoundly complex reasons why each of the Johnsons believed that what was most emphatically at stake was not financial remuneration but emotional reparation.
Throughout the four-month trial, Goldsmith (who researched the case for over a year and examined thousands of pages of documentation) was in constant attendance, and she tells the dramatic story of what occurred in spellbinding detail. We see the contesting parties, their innumerable lawyers, and the trial’s remarkable judge, Marie Lambert playing out their roles in a courtroom packed with press and spectators, and rife with animosity, mistrust, and uncontrolled emotions (which erupted into a near-riot and death threats against the judge).
Goldsmith illuminates how and why, as the trial progressed, it was transmuted almost entirely into a battle among lawyers, about lawyers, and for lawyers. She provides a masterful and devastating indictment of American law and lawyers, seen here as an out-of-control juggernaut fuelled by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of money.
"The case has left a wake of divergent opinions based on personal emotions about fathers, children and stepmothers. People ask me, "What did you think? Who was right?" I can't give an easy answer. I'm not sure I can give an answer at all. While most of the press perceived this case as an exercise in greed by individuals who already had millions and millions and millions, to me it was a pathetic affair, sad for everyone concerned. I've come to view it as a contest rooted in emotional issues: feelings of unrequited love, unfinished business, denial and loss of honour," wrote Barbara Goldsmith.
"J Seward Johnson's behaviour toward his children - his patterns of rejection and divisiveness - ultimately led them into a courtroom seeking to find what they have never had from him: recognition, a sense of worthiness and a measure of a father's love. Perhaps restitution for this loss came to be equated with money. But money was all that was left."
Family drama, courtroom drama, explosive psychological drama, a trenchant and sometimes shocking portrayal of lawyers at work today, Johnson v. Johnson (1987) is a brilliant synthesis of the legal, the social, and the human aspects of a society in disarray.
About the author: Barbara Goldsmith is an American author, journalist, and philanthropist. Elected a "Living Landmark" (by the New York Landmark Conservancy and its affiliates), awarded the Order of Merit by the Republic of Poland, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, writer Barbara Goldsmith enjoys a notable career as a master of a subtle yet stunning combination of history and biography. Through exhaustive research, Goldsmith’s much imitated innovative approach is enlightening. In her books, her main characters serve as a locomotive that pulls the train of history to form a gripping narrative.
Goldsmith has consistently examined the vast disparity between image and reality. Her clear vision illuminates both the valuable and the meretricious aspects of our society. With a fresh view, she reminds us of the delights in life, but also she has become one of our foremost commentators on the idols and subcultures - the political, financial, legal, celebrity and artistic establishments - through whom she explores our self-created illusions, our decaying values, our lost idealism.
Goldsmith's books are now translated into twenty-one languages. Her latest book Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie is based on the workbooks, letters, and diaries of Marie Curie recently released after being sealed for sixty years. Among other awards, this book won the prestigious prize from the American Institute of Physics and its thirteen affiliates as the best book on Physics written by a non-physicist. Goldsmith’s previous award-winning, best-selling books include The Straw Man (1975), Little Gloria...Happy At Last (1980) and Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (1998). For several years, she was the Senior Editor of Harper’s Bazaar. She has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. More information can be found at barbaragoldsmith.com
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