Law Humor

On February 2, a judge in Hong Kong denied Tony Chan's claim to the estate of Nina Wang, a real estate tycoon who was estimated to be worth more than four billion dollars.  Wang died in 2007, and Chan claimed she had left everything to him, her beloved feng shui master.  She had apparently given him close to a quarter of a billion dollars in cash, but he was making a play for all of it.

Wang was rich enough to be "eccentric," and she was known as "Little Sweetie" from her habit of dressing like a little girl and putting her hair in pigtails, always an appealing look for someone in her 60s.  She took over her husband's real-estate company after he was kidnapped in 1990 and was never seen again.  That's where Chan came in, because Wang apparently hired him to try to use feng shui to find her missing husband.  How feng shui was supposed to accomplish that isn't clear, but he probably gave it his best shot for the 15 years or so he was able to hang around Little Sweetie.

Wang had a will that left everything to a charitable foundation, but Chan insisted that will was a "public relations stunt" and that she had drawn up a new will leaving everything to him, saying Wang had come to think of him as her husband during the years they had known each other.  (Chan had a wife who probably also thought of him as her husband, because he was.)  He insisted he and Wang had a lot in common, sharing a love of "cooking, model helicopters and feng shui," and aren't those what most great relationships are founded on?

The foundation did not buy any of this, and neither did Judge Johnson Lam, who ruled that the later will was not genuine and the supposed bequest was not plausible.  Judge Lam apparently expressed some skepticism that Ms. Wang, who was apparently a competent businesswoman despite dressing like a weirdo, would put a feng shui master with no business experience in charge of a multi-billion dollar empire.

The day after Judge Lam's ruling, Chan was arrested and charged with forgery.  Let's see him feng shui his way out of this one.

Link: Wall Street Journal
Link: In re Estate of Kung (Feb. 2, 2010)
Link: The Guardian (UK)