After his sudden death, Mark Hughes’s multi-million dollar estate—including a spectacular 157-acre property—was inherited by his 8-year-old son. A brutal legal war ensued, pitting the family against a band of trustees with plans of their own.
of Los Angeles stands the Mountain, impervious to the Hollywood power players and business tycoons plotting and scheming below. Many have coveted its 157 acres, but the Mountain has remained tantalizingly out of reach. Spanning a surface area bigger than 100 football fields, this grassy, lush mountaintop has been the prize—once valued at $1 billion—of Middle Eastern royals, A-list stars, and mega-moguls.
As the court fights exploded, Alex was thrust into an unwanted spotlight, dubbed “America’s richest teenager.” At the heart of the lawsuits was the Mountain, which Mark had wanted preserved for his son. The property cost around $250,000 a year to maintain by 2020, but maintenance was never a question. The trustees saw its potential as a development site.
During the first decade of the dispute, Alex’s lawyers said the trustees spent $22.6 million of the trust’s money on litigation, plus around $10 million as payment to themselves, while denying Suzan’s requests for the smallest of things—some of Mark’s clothing, his surfboard, furniture that reminded Alex of his father, according to Suzan and to court documents. Suzan had been the third of Mark’s four wives and the mother of his only child. She was also his longest relationship.
For a time they lived large, then sold their home to fund their legal battles against “big pharma,” which tried to “wipe them out,” Suzan said. For a while they lived in a rental on Benedict Canyon. Their landlord, according to Suzan, was Max Baer Jr., who played Jethro Bodine onand was a son of the heavyweight boxing champion. They married in Maui in September 1987 and renewed their vows each year, in places like Cabo San Lucas, Tahiti, the French Riviera, and Hawaii.
“I didn’t want to build a giant house. It’s a beautiful piece of property and there is nothing like it on the planet, but I was happy with the house we had. You can have enough without having to go further and higher and bigger,” she said. “You can be satisfied.”finalized in six months, with Mark keeping 98 percent of the marital assets.
“We asked for Mark’s favorite T-shirt. They said, ‘Sue us,’ ” she said, adding that she had to file lawsuits to force the trust to pay the already agreed upon $10,000 a month in child support. “There’s a lot of money. There’s the company and the land, and all they have to do”—Suzan’s voice dropped below a whisper—“is just fuck over one little boy. It gets very tempting.”
At the time, Klein’s wife, Joan Dempsey Klein, was an esteemed and powerful justice on the California Appeals Court , and although Judge Klein had nothing to do with this case, from Suzan’s perspective, that gave him an advantage in court.set up MH Holdings II H, LLC in 2003, an entity that held the Mountain, then known as Tower Grove, as an asset of the trust, managed by Klein.
Noval further raised the Mountain’s profile by throwing star-studded parties. Online, he bragged that his charity—the now defunct Victorino Noval Foundation—boasted $1.2 billion in assets. These days, Noval—who declined to comment to.—is still living large. He has a following of 25,200 on his verified Instagram, where he describes himself as a “movie producer & investor based in Beverly Hills.
Back in Kuwait, anti-corruption prosecutors had been investigating the disappearance of billions of dollars from Kuwaiti state coffers. Khalid’s California lawsuit provided them with a picture of what happened to some of the money. Investigators were able to trace close to $1 billion that passed through London bank accounts to Lebanon, Bahrain, France—and California. Prosecutors could see transfers to other accounts but couldn’t access the accounts to learn more.
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