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May 4th 2006 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
£¨1£©THE words ¡°probate exception¡± do not titillate[1]. And yet a saucy[2], decade-long legal battle ______¢Ù a fortune of nearly half a billion dollars hinges on[3] this clause, which deals with the boundaries between state and federal courts in estate disputes. At issue[4] is whether Vickie Lynn Marshall, a former Playboy pin-up[5] and exotic dancer better known as Anna Nicole Smith, will get anything from the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall, an oil tycoon with assets estimated _______¢Ú $1.6 billion.
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On May 1st, Ms Smith won an important victory. Although her inheritance remains uncertain, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that she could pursue her case in federal court. £¨2£©One suspects the justices were enjoying themselves, for once.
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£¨3£©The details of the case have kept the tabloids busy. £¨4£©Marshall met Ms Smith when he was wheeled[6] into the Texas strip club where she was dancing. After a courtship of a few years, full of expensive gifts (such as $2m in jewellery) and pricier promises, the two were married in 1994. She was 26, he was 89. Fourteen months later, Marshall dropped dead ________¢Û a heart attack, leaving nothing to Ms Smith in his will.
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£¨5£©The dispute has seen the inside of five courthouses since 1995, when Ms Smith first sued Marshall¡¯s son, E. Pierce Marshall, in a Texas state court, accusing him of cutting her ________¢Ü from the estate. She insists that Marshall promised her half his fortune. His son, seething[7] at what he considers Ms Smith¡¯s gold-digging (he calls her ¡°Miss Cleavage¡±), argued that Marshall had already given her $6m in gifts and did not intend to leave her more. Ms Smith got nothing from her first lawsuit, but was awarded $475m in a federal bankruptcy ruling in California in 2000. £¨6£©A federal district court judge cut this award to $89m, and then a US appeals court ruled that the issue was not a federal matter.
£¨7£©The Supreme Court justices, who heard arguments in February, have not weighed in on the merits of Ms Smith¡¯s case. £¨8£©Indeed the buxom[8] blonde, who sniffled disingenuously during the hearings, has hardly been a sympathetic figure. The court¡¯s opinion, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a technical one that measures the scope of the probate exception. It leaves _______¢Ý state courts the probate or annulment[9] of a will and the administration of an estate. £¨9£©This puts Marshall¡¯s estate back into play, and ensures that bitter legal wrangling[10] will stretch on for years.
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