What did the hot-dog man will?

A suit leaves the fate of the Bright Leaf wiener uncertain

SMITHFIELD -- A bitter estate battle over the company that makes Johnston County's trademark fire-engine red hot dogs troubles the faithful leaving Cricket Grill with grease-stained paper bags stuffed with their lunchtime favorite.

Every week, Cricket sells thousands of Bright Leaf dogs -- made for decades just a few miles down the road at Carolina Packers.

The dispute over the estate of John "Buck" Jones, the majority shareholder and president of Carolina Packers, centers on who will control this home-grown culinary institution -- the widow Jones named as his sole heir just before he died or the three longtime employees who friends say in court documents Jones hoped would run the company.

Jones headed Carolina Packers until his death from prostate cancer in 2005. At issue are his state of mind in his final days, his stormy relationship with his wife and the trail of wills he left behind.

But for the Cricket crowd, the legal battle stirs fears about the fate of a company that has been a county fixture since Jones' father founded it in 1941 -- and the classic taste of those Bright Leaf dogs.

"If there's any change in the quality of the product, there will be an uproar," said Bill Barbee, heading to his car to wolf down a few on his short lunch break.

Joe McLeod, the executor of a will that names the longtime employees as beneficiaries, claims in a lawsuit that Jones' wife of 47 years, Jean Lassiter Jones, coerced her husband into leaving her control of the company in a new will made a month before he died. At least one of the three employees is backing the suit filed by McLeod, who was the Joneses' accountant. McLeod is pursuing the case to uphold his client's wishes, his lawyer said.

Jean Jones is defending the final will, insisting that her husband's last-minute change of heart was sincere.

"People who have been married 47 years and are toward the end of their lives tend to think about who really matters," said John Narron, the Raleigh lawyer representing Jean Jones.

The contested September 2005 will left Jones' wife all of his assets, including his shares in the company. A will he made six months earlier, before his fight with prostate cancer took a losing turn, left income from the company to her through a trust but ceded his shares to the three employees after his wife's death. The rest of his estate still would have gone to his wife.

After Jones died, McLeod filed his will first, and Jean Jones contested it. A Johnston County judge sided with her, and then McLeod sued to challenge the decision.

An appeals court confirmed the judge's ruling in a split decision, allowing the lawsuit to be heard by the state Supreme Court, which sent it back for a jury trial. A date for the case has not been set.

Clouded judgment

Affidavits present dueling versions of Buck Jones' last days. Friends and doctors of the Carolina Packers president, cited in McLeod's suit, portray Jones as ravaged by cancer, weak and confused, his judgment clouded by potent painkillers.

Michael Batts, the Rocky Mount lawyer who drafted the March 2005 will, refused to draft a new one in light of Jones' health and the abrupt shift from his previous estate plans. In court documents, he described an August 2005 meeting in which Jean Jones laid out the new will as her husband sheepishly agreed.

"She's worn him out," Batts wrote in notes from the meeting.

Jean Jones' portrait is of an ailing but still strong-willed and capable man who commissioned a painting, sold a Lear jet and continued to make decisions about his treatment in the days before his death.