Anna Nichole Smith Goes to Washington
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James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Tuesday, February 28, 2006 |
Anna Nicole Smith has taken her case all the way to the Supreme Court.
With an oil fortune on the line, former stripper Anna Nicole Smith encountered a sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Several justices said they were concerned that the one-time Playboy Playmate was kept from pursuing a piece of her late husband’s fortune. “It’s quite a story,” said Justice Stephen Breyer.
Smith married oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was a 26-year-old topless dancer in Texas. Marshall died the following year. His fortune has been estimated at as much as $1.6 billion. One of his two sons claims he is the only heir.
Breyer said there was evidence that the son hired private detectives to keep Smith away from her elderly husband’s bedside. Smith’s claim is simple, said Justice David Souter, “just give me the money I would have had.”
Justices repeatedly referred to the amount of money at stake, and criticized arguments that only a Texas court had jurisdiction to settle the nasty family feud. “That’s just not the way our system works,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman justice.
About two dozen photographers swarmed Smith and her attorney as they left through a side door of the court building after the hearing, then sped away in a black SUV. Earlier, when she arrived, several photographers were knocked to the ground in their zeal to get a picture of Smith, dressed in a knee-length dress, high heels and black sunglasses.
Smith, the spokeswoman for a diet product company, was awarded $474 million by a federal bankruptcy judge. That was later reduced by a federal district judge and then thrown out altogether by a federal appeals court on jurisdictional grounds. The high court’s eventual ruling will determine whether Smith gets another chance at part of Marshall’s estate.
The justices are dealing with a technical question: When may federal courts hear claims that involve state probate proceedings? Smith lost in Texas state courts, which found that E. Pierce Marshall was the sole heir to his father’s estate.
Huge crowds packed the court. “Most people will do a double take,” said Edward Morrison, a former Supreme Court clerk who specializes in bankruptcy law at Columbia University. “It raises the novelty level and makes a technical issue somewhat more entertaining.” Douglas Baird, a bankruptcy expert at the University of Chicago, said: “I’d suspect some justices haven’t the slightest idea who Anna Nicole is.”
The Bush administration is siding with Smith as a technical matter, arguing that the justices should protect federal court jurisdiction in such disputes.
Marshall showered Smith with $6.6 million in gifts that included two homes, $2.8 million in jewelry and $700,000 in clothes, and she contends that he also promised her half his estate. Pierce Marshall said various wills and trusts his father prepared over the years made him the only heir.
A federal court ruled in 2002 that Smith was entitled to compensatory and punitive damages because Pierce Marshall altered, destroyed and falsified documents to try to keep her from receiving money from his father’s estate. He denies any wrongdoing, and that decision was thrown out.
The case is Marshall v. Marshall, 04-1544.
She looks good in her court clothes. A better black dress than this one, from last year’s Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson:
Although perhaps not as good as this one:
It depends what you’re going for, I guess.
Update: Wizbang Pop! used a variant of our title and has more pihotos.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick does her take on the case under the headline “Rack and Ruin” and concludes,
It seems cruel to report that Anna Nicole then stood and exited the courtroom, leaving the building by a side door and again granting no interviews. I would love to tell you that she did something, anything, to distinguish herself from the thousands of appellants who have brought their cases into these marble walls. But the court has worked its magical spell of blandness, even upon Anna, and she is just another litigant with a probate dispute today. She has stepped into the only place in America where her breasts have no power.
Heh–she said breasts. No photos of said breasts, however. Not that photos of Anna Nichole Smith’s breasts and, indeed, her nude form in general, are difficult to come by on the Internets.
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God Bless Anna Nichole Smith, my sincere sympathy to her family, friends, and loved ones. My heart breaks for this woman a tortoured soul. Her baby daughter will never know her mother or how much her mother loved her. Aren’t there any people out there with a heart. I hear people putting this woman down, they did not know her and what gives them the right to judge this woman do they think they are God are what. I believe she was so devastated when her son died, only a mother would know this kind of pain. God Bless You Anna you will be missed.
Love & God Bless
Debra Olmos Sutton
I pray that Anna Nichole has found peace and she is in the arms of love and tenderness with her beloved son close to her. I pray that her baby girl will also find her way into arms of love and tenderness here on the planet….
Catherine Bonner
unbrokenheart
the gift of healing
http://www.unbrokenheart.com
Please send any messages banning travel to the bahmas, until the child known as Dannielyn Smith is returned to the U.S. and Mr. Stern is banned fromed the islands. Thank you.
people need to stop putting anna nichole down!! instead of bad mouthing her people should pray that is is happy now in heaven with her son dan she was heart broken the kind of hurt that no one could take away. her tears were real her pain was real you people need to grow up!!!
there is a baby girl left behind without a mother and your thoughts and prays should be with this little girl who will never know what it was like to be held by her mother and she wont even remember her mom’s smile. who cares if anna married her first husband for the money it was her life. look around no one’s life is perfect!!
Everyone has a skeleton in their closet. Judge thyself before judging others. Anna Nicole Smith was human too. She like to have fun, she loved her children and suffered a great loss when Daniel died. No mother should have to endure such pain. And for the grandmother of little Dannielynn, stay away. You definitely were not mother of the year with Nichole, don’t jump on the banwagon now. The baby needs to stay with her dad Howard. I think he truly loves her. And as for the two men trying to get custody of the baby, leave it be. Your greediness is nauseating.
GOD BLESS YOU ANNA & DANIEL, you will not be forgotten.
C.S. Sears
Millersville, MD
Comments are Closed
Isn’t it obvious Anna Nichole Smith married Howard Marshall for his millions? She may be entitled to a fraction of his estate, but she should not get half or a fourth due to the fact she was only married to him for a year. In this case, I believe, his children should receive most of the estate. After all, these are his children and are also equally entitled.