J. Seward Johnson Jr., a sculptor who may be responsible for more double takes than anyone in history thanks to his countless lifelike creations in public places — a businessman in downtown Manhattan, surfers at a Florida beach, a student eating a sandwich on a curb in Princeton, N.J. — died on Tuesday at his home in Key West, Fla. He was 89.

His family said through a spokesman that the cause was cancer.

Mr. Johnson had another distinction besides his art. As a member of the family that founded Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical and consumer products giant, he was one of six siblings who, in a high-profile court case in the 1980s, sought to overturn his father’s will, which left his vast fortune to a former maid, Barbara Piasecka Johnson, whom the senior Mr. Johnson had married late in life. A settlement was reached just before the case went to the jury, giving the children a share of the estate but leaving most of it to Mrs. Johnson.

But more enduring were the sculptures, which often caught passers-by unawares; many would pause for a closer look and, in the cellphone age, a picture. One sculpture in particular became something more than a curiosity. It was a work Mr. Johnson called “Double Check”: a seated businessman reviewing the contents of his briefcase.

The sculpture was in Liberty Park near the World Trade Center when the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left the area in ruins. Many other artworks in the buildings and outside were destroyed that day, but the man with the briefcase, though knocked off his perch, survived, covered in debris.