A rich polo club founder who legally adopted his girlfriend has been convicted of killing an engineering student in a drunk driving crash.
John Goodman of Wellington, Fla., was taken into custody after the jury of five men and one woman announced the guilty verdict on Friday afternoon, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Jurors deliberated for more than five hours on charges that Goodman, 48, was drunk when he ran a stop sign and crashed his Bentley into a Hyundai, killing the driver Scott Wilson in February 2010. Wilson's car flipped and fell into a canal, drowning him.
Goodman could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The case took on national interest when it was revealed that Goodman -- the International Polo Club Palm Beach founder -- had quietly adopted his girlfriend, making her eligible for a share of the $300 million trust he'd established for his biological children.
Critics charged that Goodman, 48, had exploited a loophole in order to protect some of his immense wealth from a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Wilson's family. Goodman settled with the Wilson family for an unspecified amount earlier this month, shortly before the criminal trial began, according to WPTV.
A guardian for his teenage children fought back by filing a lawsuit to get the eyebrow-raising adoption nullified.
Sign up with Google
