Mitzi Osborne, the wife of the late Little Rock philanthropist Jennings Osborne, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
According to U.S. Bankruptcy Court records, Marie Elizabeth “Mitzi” Osborne, who lives at 152 Hickory Creek Circle in Little Rock, filed a voluntary bankruptcy petition Tuesday.
The petition lists estimated assets of between $101,000 and $500,000 and estimated debts of $500,001 to $1 million, and identifies the debts as mostly consumer debts, as opposed to business debts.
Two pages of creditors that Mitzi Osborne listed in the records include her daughter, Allison “Breezy” Osborne-Wingfield; the Internal Revenue Service; the state of Arkansas; the Pulaski County treasurer; utility companies Centerpoint, Entergy and Utility Billing Services; health-care facilities such as Baptist Health; collection agencies; and a local law firm.
Mitzi Osborne didn’t have a listed telephone number, and her attorney in the bankruptcy case, Lyndsey D. Dilks, was out of the office Friday and didn’t return a reporter’s telephone call.
The bankruptcy petition comes a year after five Osborne properties - four in Little Rock and one in Hot Springs - were auctioned off to pay family debts. Several months later, in November, the people who submitted winning bids for two houses at 3 Robinwood Drive and 5 Robinwood Drive filed a breach-of contract suit that is pending in Pulaski County Circuit Court.
The bids were submitted for the houses on either side of the Osbornes’ main residence, but the bidders said they weren’t allowed to close on the sales because the lender rejected the winning bids.The winning bid for 5 Robinwood Drive was $214,000, while the winning bid for the house at 3 Robinwood Drive was $165,000.
Both bidders said they submitted $20,000 in earnest money and signed contracts stating that the sales would close in 30 days. One bidder then extended the closing deadline in return for a release on the earnest money, but the other didn’t sign an extension, according to the suit, and hasn’t received a return of the earnest money.
The lawsuit asks that Mitzi Osborne be ordered to close on the houses and that two banks release any liens on the properties that would prevent the titles from being transferred.
The three Robinwood Drive houses, which face Cantrell Road, were once the site of Christmas light displays involving millions of lights - until neighbors sued in 1993 and the spectacle was declared a public nuisance and ordered shut down. Jennings Osborne then moved most of the lights to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., where the lights became part of an annual display.
In 1968, the Osbornes founded the Arkansas Research Medical Testing Center, which tested drugs on people. The business was sold to affiliates of Stephens Inc. for $24 million in 2004. The company changed its name and closed in 2010, the same year that the Osbornes started another company, the Osborne Research Center.
Jennings Osborne sued the Stephens affiliates in 2008, alleging that gross mismanagement led to the company’s downfall and cost him millions of dollars in promised consulting fees. He was awarded $3 million, but the Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the award in April 2011.
That same month, Jennings Osborne underwent heart surgery. He died three months later on July 27, 2011, at age 67, as a result of complications from the surgery, a family friend said.
In addition to the Christmas light displays that made him famous, Jennings Osborne lent financial support to other large public displays in Arkansas, including fireworks, elaborate pork dinners before Razorback football games and fundraising barbecues.
Bankruptcy court records show two related bankruptcy cases from 1995 listed alongside Mitzi Osborne’s recent petition.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 06/15/2013