That does it!..I'm quitting trading and getting a sex change.
Judge Awards Anna Nicole Smith $449 Million
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A federal bankruptcy judge said he would award former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith $449 million in a court battle with the son of her late 90-year-old husband over his $1.6 billion estate.
But U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Samuel Bufford said the amount Smith is due could change, depending on punitive damages that he would consider and a separate court case over the fortune of the late oil baron J. Howard Marshall -- the so-called ``richest man in Texas'' -- set to begin Thursday in Houston.
``I'm so excited,'' Smith told KPRC-TV in Houston on Wednesday. ``No one ever took care of me in my whole life, and this man did and I loved him for that.''
``I hope it ends up like my husband wanted it to. I hope it ends up that I get everything that he wanted me to have,'' she said.
Pierce Marshall, 61, said in a statement that he would appeal. ``This extraordinary decision is a miscarriage of justice that is not supported by the facts and will not stand up on appeal.''
His attorneys argued in court that, while the elder Marshall may have lavished Smith with gifts and attention, he never left her money in any of his six wills.
The former Vicki Lynn Hogan met Marshall in 1991 at the Houston strip club where she worked and married him in 1994, when he was 89 and she was 26. Their marriage ended 14 months later with the billionaire's death.
Smith came forward to claim that her wheelchair-bound husband repeatedly vowed to leave her half of his estate. She sought that money in Houston probate court and in bankruptcy court in Los Angeles, arguing that Pierce Marshall interfered with her inheritance.
In testimony last October in Bufford's court, Smith clutched a photo of her late husband and said he repeatedly proposed to her after they met the strip club where her ample figure made her a crowd favorite.
So anxious was he to marry that he offered half his money, she said.
``This was one of the ways he wanted to hurry me up and marry him. He loved me and I loved him,'' Smith told the court.
Bufford, who conducted a five-day trial, agreed with her in a nine-page written ruling issued late Wednesday.
``The court finds that Pierce Marshall ... interfered with Vicki Marshall's expectancy of an inheritance, which she would have otherwise have obtained ... under Texas law,'' Bufford said.
``The damages are $449,754,134, minus ... any amount that Vicki Marshall actually recovers in the pending probate court action in Texas'' and estate taxes, he said. ``In addition, Vicki Marshall is entitled to punitive damages in an amount that remains to be determined.''
Smith filed for bankruptcy protection in 1996 after she lost an $850,000 judgement brought against her by a former female assistant alleging sexual harassment.
Marshall's older son, Howard Marshall III, 63, is also suing for part of the estate in the Texas case.
His father cut him out of the will after a business dispute in 1980 involving Koch Industries, a Wichita, Kansas-based energy firm which the elder Marshall helped found and in which he was a major shareholder.
Howard Marshall says he lost his inheritance because Pierce Marshall convinced their father that his brother was working against their interests.
Pierce Marshall, who denies his brother's allegations, has said his father's assets are worth between $40 million and $60 million, not the $1.6 billion claimed by Smith. That figure is in dispute because of the Koch holdings, the value of which are not publicly known because Koch is a privately held company.
06:11 09-28-00 |
