Business & Finance: Family Feud

When ruggedly individualistic Robert Ingersoll Ingalls Sr. died last year at 68, he left behind a double legacy: a $40 million, family-controlled iron and shipbuilding empire, and a bitter legal wrangle over who should run it.

Starting with what he later described as “a one-horse shop—one Negro and one mule,” Ingalls built his blacksmith and forging business into Alabama’s Ingalls Iron Works, biggest independent steel fabricator in the South. He branched out into shipbuilding, and wartime orders built his Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp. of Pascagoula, Miss, into the largest shipyard on the Gulf Coast. Last year the combined enterprises grossed more than $200,000,000.

Though he made his only son, Bob Jr., president in 1941, crusty Bob Ingalls Sr.* continued his one-man rule, never let his son make much of a mark for himself. In 1948 Bob Jr. divorced his wife and married Jane Sevier Smith, a widow with two children. His father, a stern Presbyterian who did not believe in divorce, fired him from his $45,000-a-year job.

This set off legal actions and bitter recriminations which gave Birmingham tongues something to wag about for four years. Determined to get back a block of stock he had given his son, Ingalls Sr. brought court action to force him to sell it to stockholders under a 1943 agreement. The court turned him down, on the ground that the stock could be retired only by death or resignation, not by firing. Then he sent armed guards with $2,131,000 in $1,000 bills to Bob Jr. to buy the stock back. Young Bob refused, saying that it was worth far more. When his father went to court again, Bob Jr. retaliated with a $2,000,000 damage suit on the ground that his business reputation had been damaged. After his father died, Bob Jr. insisted that Ingalls Sr.’s stock be retired by the company under the 1943 agreement. But the fight went on, and his mother moved into the board chairmanship.

Last week, in a surprise move, Ingalls Iron Works’ directors named Bob Ingalls Jr. chairman. He announced that he would ask that all the court actions be dropped, thus end the family feud. Though his mother still holds the disputed shares, Bob Jr. at last will have a chance to show how well he can run the company.

*Distant cousin to Dave Ingalls,