The attorney, Stuart Stein, told a federal appeals court Wednesday that Dummar deserves another shot at the money because of pilot Robert Diero, who came forward in 2004 to say he flew Hughes to a brothel in Nevada around the time and the place that Dummar said he found Hughes.

Stein, an estate-planning lawyer from Albuquerque, N.M., with a radio show, argued that Hughes' associates knew about Diero but didn't disclose it at the original probate trial in 1977-78.

"The judgment was obtained by fraud," Stein told a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Dummar's lawsuit seeks the money from two men who benefited from Hughes' will, one of whom is deceased. Randy Dryer, an attorney for one of the estates, told the appeals judges that Stein's allegations of fraud are based on "speculation and conjecture."

And Dryer said that even if a jury heard from Diero and believed the story, "It doesn't necessarily follow that the jury would have concluded that the (will) was valid.

"They could have easily concluded that Mr. Dummar saw a golden opportunity to reward himself for his good deeds," Dryer said.

Dryer also argued the will already has been determined to be a forgery, saying that it doesn't contain the authentic writing of Hughes.

Dummar is among the most famous of hundreds of people who came forward claiming to be heirs to Hughes' estate after the eccentric billionaire's death in 1976.

Now 63, Dummar delivers frozen food and lives in Brigham City, Utah. He says as a 22-year-old man he was driving across the Nevada desert in December 1967 when he came across a "bum" near Lida Junction and gave him a ride to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.

Dummar said the man claimed he was Hughes, but he didn't believe it until someone he said was Hughes' personal messenger delivered the handwritten will to the Brigham City gas station that Dummar owned.

It included instructions to turn the will over to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which also stood to gain $156 million. The church never pursued a claim.

Diero said it wasn't until years later that his memories about the flight were jogged by a newspaper article mentioning Lida Junction, a tiny community about 150 miles north of Las Vegas and six miles from the place where Dummar claims he found Hughes.

Diero had been a director of aviation facilities for Hughes Tool Co. He broke a nondisclosure agreement with the company when he came forward with his account of flying Hughes from Las Vegas to the Cottontail Ranch brothel for a tryst with a diamond-toothed prostitute. After losing track of Hughes, Diero said he returned to Las Vegas without him.

Diero has said he routinely delivered Hughes on secret nighttime flights in a single-engine plane to rural Nevada brothels, a claim disputed by others familiar with Hughes.

After Diero came forward, Stein renewed Dummar's claims in court, seeking money from Hughes' cousin, William Lummis, and the estate of Frank Gay, who was chief operating officer of Summa Corp., which controlled Hughes' major assets.

Lower courts dismissed the claims, so Dummar appealed to the 10th Circuit on the grounds that the alleged fraud meant the case had not been fairly and fully litigated.

Gay died in May 2007 at age 86. Lummis is retired and is living in Texas. Peggy Tomsic, an attorney for Gay's estate, asked the appeals court to uphold the ruling against Dummar in the original probate case.

A jury in Rio Grande City, Texas, in April 2006 awarded $32 million to the widow of 71-year-old Leonel Garza, a short-term Vioxx user who died of a heart attack in 2001. That award — $7 million for compensatory damages and $25 million for punitive damages — later was cut to about $7.75 million under Texas law limiting damages.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Texas 4th Court of Appeals overturned the verdict, ruling in favor of Merck. The opinion was signed by Justice Sandee Bryan Marion.

The judges wrote that Garza's family did not prove his brief use of Vioxx caused two blood clots that the family's attorneys argued triggered his heart attack. The judges also concluded the family did not provide sufficient evidence to rule out his long-standing heart disease as the cause of his fatal heart attack.

Garza had a prior heart attack and heart bypass surgery, smoked for nearly 30 years and died of the second heart attack after taking Vioxx for less than a month.

Merck lawyers had argued that heart attack was the end result of his 23 years of heart disease.

"There was simply no reliable evidence Vioxx caused Mr. Garza's heart attack," Travis Sales, one of the attorneys who represented Merck during the trial, said in an interview.

David Hockema, one of the Garza family attorneys, said they had just read the opinion and had not decided on their next move. Possible next steps would be a motion for a rehearing before the same court of appeals or a petition to the Texas Supreme Court, he said.

"I think the decision is clearly wrong and sets an impossible burden for the plaintiff to show the offending instrument (Vioxx) was the sole cause of their injury," Hockema said.

After the trial, a juror admitted previously borrowing more than $12,000 from Garza's widow, Felicia, an issue that Merck also raised in its appeal, Sales noted. However, that was not mentioned in the three-page appellate court decision.

Temeka Rachelle Lewis pleaded guilty Wednesday to promoting prostitution and money laundering. The 32-year-old is among four defendants in the case involving the Emperor's Club VIP call-girl ring.

Court papers say the FBI secretly recorded conversations between Lewis and Spitzer about a Feb. 13 tryst with a prostitute in Washington. The former governor is identified in the court papers as Client No. 9

Brian Gegner, of Fairfield, was sentenced last week to 180 days in jail for contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a minor.

He was ordered months ago to make sure his 18-year-old daughter Brittany Gegner, who has a history of truancy, received her GED — something that hasn't happened yet.

Brittany Gegner, who said Monday that she plans to take a required GED test this month, said her father shouldn't be blamed for her failure because she has been living with her mother.

"It was my wrongdoing, not his," said Brittany Gegner, whose fiance and 18-month-old daughter also live at her mother's home in nearby Hamilton. "He shouldn't have to go to jail for something I did."

Her mother agrees.

"Brittany is almost 19 years old now and I think it's unfair to put her father in jail," said Shana Roach. "She's an adult now, and it's not right to rip an innocent man from his home."

Butler County Juvenile Court administrator Rob Clevenger Jr. said Monday that the court still has jurisdiction in the case because Brittany Gegner was a juvenile when the truancy problems began and when the charge against Brian Gegner was filed in 2007.

A hearing on a motion filed by Brian Gegner's attorney to reconsider the sentence is scheduled for Friday. Messages seeking comment were not returned Monday at the offices of defense attorney Tamara Sack and the Butler County prosecutor.

Brian Gegner's wife, Stephanie Gegner, said she and her husband are afraid he will lose his job if he remains in jail. She said they tried to keep his daughter in school.

"You'd take her to school and she'd go out the other door," Stephanie Gegner said.

The court didn't consider arguments on behalf of 31-year-old Mark Downs Jr. of Dunbar, saying his attorney missed a filing deadline by two weeks.

Downs has been sentenced to one-to-six years in prison, but has remained free on bond pending appeal.

Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering an 8-year-old player money to hit a mildly autistic teammate with a ball during warmups before a June 2005 playoff game. Prosecutors say Downs wanted the autistic boy to be hurt and unable to play in the game.

In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said federal law allows the practice and that "this is not a case where the magistrate judge is asked to preside or make determinations after the trial has commenced." Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying, "Whatever their virtues, magistrate judges are no substitute" for U.S. District Court judges.

U.S. District judges are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, have life tenure and their salaries cannot be reduced. Magistrates, appointed by U.S. District judges, have no such protection.

A Mexican citizen, Gonzalez does not speak fluent English and did not have an interpreter at the bench conference where his attorney consented to designating the magistrate for the task.

Ordinarily, U.S. District Court judges participate in selecting juries for criminal and civil trials, a process known as voir dire.

Lawyers regard voir dire as one of the most important parts of a case because it often uncovers biases, leading to excluding members of the group of citizens from which a jury is selected.

There are more than 500 federal magistrate judges, who serve eight-year terms and are recommended by a citizen's merit screening committee. The magistrate setup was begun by Congress in 1968, expanding on a system that is 175 years old.

Faced with increasing caseloads, the federal judiciary assigns an array of duties to magistrates. Those include initial proceedings in criminal cases, presiding over some minor criminal trials and trials of civil cases with the consent of both sides.