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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: haqihana who wrote (44638)	1/15/2006 7:03:35 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

The lawyer always gets a cut. Can you imagine how the lawyers on both sides laughed over this? Anna Nicole Smith's Plus-Sized Payday by Mark Armstrong Sep 28, 2000, 12:00 PM PT It appears we've actually found the one thing bigger than Anna Nicole Smith's, um, undergarments. A federal bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles has awarded $450 million to the curvaceous former Playboy Playmate and Guess? jeans model, saying she was deprived of her share of her late husband's estimated $2 billion estate. In what marks yet another chapter in the tumultuous love story of an 89-year-old billionaire and his buxom young bride, Judge Samuel Bufford ruled Smith's stepson tried to interfere with her inheritance from J. Howard Marshall II--an elderly Texas oilman who met Smith when she was just a topless dancer at a Houston strip club. Bufford awarded the 32-year-old Smith--also known as Vickie Lynn Marshall (or "Miss Cleavage" to her late husband's son)--$449,754,134, the amount that stock in Marshall's company, Koch Industries, rose during their 14-month marriage. He ruled that Smith also may be entitled to punitive damages. And that could be just the beginning. Wednesday's ruling came just a day before a probate trial begins in Houston, during which Smith may be able to claim half of Marshall's fortune. The bitter inheritance feud between Smith and Marshall's son, E. Pierce Marshall, has been brewing for nearly four years. Smith testified last year that her husband promised her part of his fortune, and that Pierce Marshall tried to cheat her out of at least $556 million to which she was entitled. The younger Marshall claimed Smith was nowhere to be found on Marshall's six wills, and that Smith never had a prenuptial agreement with her husband. However, Smith's lawyers submitted documents that allegedly showed Pierce Marshall tried to take control of his father's assets. The judge agreed, ruling Smith's unlikely hubby always intended to take care of her. Smith, a ninth-grade dropout and former chicken restaurant worker, met Marshall in 1991 while she was a dancer at Gigi's in Houston. Soon, she became "the light" of his life, as he showered her with money and jewels. And in 1994, after Smith made her own name as Playboy's Playmate of the Year, the 26-year-old model married Marshall--a spring chicken at age 89. "He wanted to make me happy," she told a Los Angeles judge last year. "My wish was his command." E. Pierce Marshall said he would appeal the decision. On Thursday, he also unsuccessfully requested a mistrial in Houston probate court, citing the effect of the Los Angeles ruling on the jury. (Opening statements have been tentatively set for Monday, in a trial expected to last into December.) "This extraordinary decision is a miscarriage of justice that is not supported by the facts and will not stand up on appeal," he said in a statement Wednesday. "We are confident that a Texas jury that is permitted to evaluate all of the evidence in the case will allow my father's clearly stated wishes to be carried out." eonline.com