WASHINGTON – The US supreme court yesterday ruled against Anna Nicole Smith's estate, bringing to an apparent end a long legal battle the former Playboymodel, who died in 2007, had waged to get part of the fortune left by her late Texas oil baron husband.
It marked the second time the US supreme court has ruled in the dispute involving the former topless dancer and Texas billionaire J Howard Marshall, whom Smith married in 1994 when she was 26 and he was 89.
The supreme court in 2006 gave Smith another chance to try to collect the hundreds of millions of dollars she said her late husband had promised her before his death after 14 months of marriage.
Smith’s four-year-old daughter and sole heir, Dannielynn Birkhead, would have benefited if the latest ruling had gone the other way.
In the decision, the judges, by a 5-4 vote, upheld a US appeals court ruling that Smith’s estate could get none of the $300 million (€212 million) that she had sought.
The ruling was a victory for the estate of Pierce Marshall, the son of the Texas oil tycoon, who was worth an estimated $1.6 billion.
The Marshall family said the ruling “will finally put an end to a frivolous lawsuit based on fabricated claims”.
J Howard Marshall’s will left nearly all his money to his son and nothing to Smith. Pierce Marshall died in 2006. – (Reuters)