Anna Nicole Smith goes to Washington

[Elvira]

02-26-06

Anna Nicole Smith goes to Washington
BY HELEN KENNEDY

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Anna Nicole Smith, who has some experience in seducing geezers, will put her skills to the ultimate test Tuesday when her long-running inheritance drama comes before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It isn't every day that the august high court gets a visit from a busty blond ex-stripper, Playboy Playmate, reality show star and National Enquirer columnist.

But Ms. Smith is going to Washington.

"She's really sort of honored and awed that the court agreed to hear her case," said her appellate lawyer, Kent Richland.

"Anybody would feel those kinds of things, but she's had a life where there's been a lot of notoriety," he said. "It should make all of us kind of happy that those kinds of superficial things don't matter to the court."

Smith, whose antics in state court are still being chuckled over in Houston, will be sitting in the spectator's area and won't actually speak. And she won't make the mistake of wearing a hot pink outfit with the word "Spoiled" emblazoned in rhinestones on her most famous assets, as she once did on the stand.

"She'll be demurely dressed," Richland guaranteed.

The would-be Marilyn Monroe has been fighting for nearly a decade to get half the $1.6 billion estate left by her late husband, Texas oil magnate Howard Marshall. She was 26 and he was 89 when they married in 1994. He died of stomach cancer a year later without mentioning her in his will.

Various courts have alternately sided with Smith or Marshall's son, Pierce, who went to extraordinary - and often sleazy - lengths to cut Smith out of any money. One court awarded her $475 million, mainly because Pierce Marshall had falsified documents.

The Supreme Court will sort out the contradictions between the different courts. No matter what it decides, the case will return to the lower court level and drag on.

After 30 years as an appellate lawyer, Richland is facing the prospect of making his first arguments before the Supreme Court. He said he's pretty confident, given that his petition to be heard won a rare unanimous thumbs-up from the justices.

And in a delicious case of strange bedfellows, the Bush administration - in the person of the solicitor general - is stepping in to argue in support of Smith's position.

The narrow issue to be considered by the high court is a desperately dry question of state vs. federal jurisdiction over probate matters.

Missing will be all the dramatic and sordid elements of the case, which once led a district court judge in California to include a footnote in his decision about "the odiousness of the parties involved in this case."

The justices won't be hearing about how Smith, too zaftig to get an evening gig at her Houston strip club, was dancing a day shift when Marshall - too frail to go out at night - was wheeled in. He proposed a week later.

They won't hear how she was the second stripper the old man wooed lavishly: the previous one had died suddenly of facelift complications.

They won't hear Letitia Hunt, the old man's deeply religious nurse, testify that Smith climbed onto her husband's bed as he lay dying, bared her breasts and asked, "Do you miss my rosebuds?" - just before holding up a tape recorder and saying, "Tell the judge that you want your wife to be taken care of."

Marshall's lawyers will not be allowed to mock Smith's claim that she was the light of her husband's life by playing a recording of Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life," as they did during their closing arguments in Texas.

And no one will hear from Smith, who not only wept and rambled incoherently on the stand, but also blurted out "screw you" under cross-examination.

Richland is good-humored about all the interest in his flamboyant client's trip to the stuffy high court, acknowledging an amusement factor in the "weird turn of events."

"We've had calls from People magazine to Nina Totenberg at NPR - the whole gamut. They love the juxtaposition," he said. "It's a kick."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/goss...p-334775c.html

[NawdleZouss]

I never knew that she wasn't mentioned in the old dude's will. Ok, I change my mind. She shouldn't get a cent.

[darksithbunny]

I think she shouldn't get anything either. If I was Pierce, I would have offered a good sum, enough that she wouldn't cause anymore grief. She is digging her own grave anyhow with the drugs and whatnot.

[Elvira]

Supreme Court Hears Ex-Playmate's Case

02-28-06
By GINA HOLLAND

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to bless Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith's pursuit of a piece of her late husband's oil fortune.

The court waded into an 11-year family feud over the estate of J. Howard Marshall II, who died at age 90 after a brief marriage to Smith. The case is dominated by themes of sex, greed and deception.

"It's quite a story," Justice Stephen Breyer marveled.

Marshall's youngest son, E. Pierce Marshall, claims that he is the sole heir and that Smith's legal fight is dead, because she lost in a Texas probate court.

Justices appeared unwilling to buy that.

Smith, a former stripper known for her flashy, cleavage-revealing outfits, watched from the back of the court, dressed in black. Her lawyers said she was in tears during part of the argument when justices discussed her late husband.

Justices tread delicately on the subject matter.

Chief Justice John Roberts said the case involved "a substantial amount of assets," an apparent reference not to Smith but to the fortune amassed by her husband of 14 months, estimated at as much as $1.6 billion.

The court's other new member, Samuel Alito, remained silent as did Justice Clarence Thomas.

Otherwise, however, it was a lively debate that included many references to Smith and her plight, although justices referred to her by her given name, Vickie Lynn.

Breyer said there was evidence that the will was forged and that the son hired private detectives to keep Smith away from her elderly husband's sick bed. She was a 26-year-old topless dancer, divorced with a son, when she and Marshall were married. One of her husband's nurses testified that Smith bared her breasts to the bedridden man as part of her effort to get an inheritance.

Justice David Souter distilled her claims in only a few words: "I just want some money from this guy."

Her late husband, a widower with a penchant for strippers, showered Smith with gifts including two homes, jewelry and clothes.

In addition, she contends that he promised her half his estate.

G. Eric Brunstad Jr., the lawyer for the son, said that a Texas court investigated her claims during a five-month trial and rejected them. He said that Smith had no grounds to bring a separate claim in federal court in California.

He faced tough comments from the justices who seemed hesitant to limit the federal courts' reach.

"That's just not the way our system works," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman justice who was especially feisty in her questioning.

"I don't see your logic," Souter told Brunstad.

The case requires the court to clarify when federal courts may hear claims that involve state probate proceedings.

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. She declined to answer questions.

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.

Justices seemed ready to overturn the appeals court, although a Supreme Court victory now would not guarantee that Smith will receive any money.

Pierce Marshall said in a statement after the argument that a "decision to return the case to the lower courts still leaves us with numerous other grounds."

"If necessary, each of those remaining grounds will be pursued vigorously," he said.

The case is Marshall v. Marshall, 04-1544.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200...D8G2BUJG1.html

[alcohol the honey]

She should get some of his money. No one really cared about that old man anyway. His money was up for grabs. He married Anna for what? Love? He's old but not stupid. This marriage seemed like a marriage of convenience. She gave him sex and he gave her materialistic things. He was billion year. Anna and her step-son could have worked it out. But from what I see their nothing but money hungry, greedy bastards.

[Palermo]

I thought I read she never slept with him, he just liked to see her ginourmous boobs