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Hughes left much agony behind for others. During his lifetime, he always played off both friends and enemies against one another and thus set the stage for the power struggle now under way. In the first months after his death, it seemed that the longtime Summa insiders and his heirs would avoid strife. Chester Davis, the pugnacious Wall Street lawyer who masterminded Hughes' long and ultimately successful legal battle against the Eastern financial Establishment regarding alleged antitrust violations at TWA, suggested that the closest heir, Houston Lawyer Will Lummis, 48, become chairman of the Summa Corp. at $180,000 a year and co-administrator of the estate. But after Lummis, the son of Hughes' maternal aunt and a striking Hughes lookalike, examined the Summa books, he started to worry.
Under the management of Davis and his ally, Summa Executive Vice President Frank William Gay, the company had lost a total of $132 million from 1970 through last September. One reason for the losses was the inexperience of Summa executives in running casinos and hotels. The estate's once vast assets dwindled so fast that the company might be hard pressed to meet federal inheritance tax payments; the first installment, estimated at $25 million, will presumably be due in January 1978. Three of its seven Nevada establishments were—and still are—losing big money.* Worse still, Summa was ordered to pay $71 million as a settlement to shareholders shortchanged by Hughes when he took over Air West in 1970.
When Lummis tried to impose his will on the Old Guard, Davis struck back in a Delaware court by seeking to have him removed as co-administrator of the estate, charging that Lummis had a conflict of interest as both co-administrator and Summa chairman. Lummis' answer was to fire Davis as Summa chief counsel (he had earlier kicked him off the board). A hard man to beat, Davis simply moved his power base to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, run by the oldtimer triumvirate of Davis, Gay and Nadine Henley, Hughes' onetime assistant. The institute is a tax-free foundation that Hughes established in 1954 as sole owner of Hughes Aircraft, a major defense contractor (estimated 1976 sales: $1.6 billion). Hughes Helicopter has won a defense contract—to build a new attack helicopter—that could run as high as $3.5 billion.
Meanwhile, Lummis, in an effort to stop the losses at Summa's casinos in Nevada, has hired Phil Hannifin, former chairman of the Nevada gaming-control board, to run the gambling operations. He will report directly to Lummis, strengthening Lummis' control over day-to-day operations.
For the moment, Davis is secure within the medical institute fortress. In fact, he has a far more profitable part of the empire than Lummis. Still, the ultimate solution of the conflict depends on a Hughes will—if there is a valid one. George Francom, a personal aide, has testified that Hughes once mentioned he had drawn up a handwritten will. But when Francom asked about its whereabouts, Hughes, ever suspicious, snapped, "You don't think I'm going to tell you where it is, do you?"