WASHINGTON - Playboy playmate Anna Nicole Smith has an unusual bedfellow in the Supreme Court fight over her late husband’s fortune: the Bush administration.
The administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer filed arguments on Smith’s behalf and wants to take part when the case is argued before the justices.
The court will decide early next year whether to let the U.S. solicitor general share time with Smith’s attorney during the one hour argument on Feb. 28.
Smith, a television reality star and native Texan, plans to attend the court argument.
She is trying to collect millions of dollars from the estate of J. Howard Marshall II, the oil tycoon she married in 1994 when he was 89 and she was a 26-year-old topless dancer in Houston. Marshall died in 1995.
Like Marshall, President Bush was a Texas oil man. Both attended Yale. Both held government positions in Washington.
There are differences. Marshall had a penchant for strippers, and the court record before the justices is one of poverty, greed, sex and family rivalry.
In and out of courts A federal bankruptcy judge sided with Smith in the fight over her late husband’s estate, awarding her $474 million. That was reduced to about $89 million by a federal district judge, then thrown out altogether by a federal appeals court.
The issue before the high court is one only lawyers would love: when may federal courts hear claims that involve state probate proceedings. Smith lost in Texas state courts, which found that E. Pierce Marshall was the sole heir to his father’s estate.
The Bush administration’s filings in the case are technical. Without getting into the details of the family squabble, Solicitor General Paul Clement said that the justices should protect federal court jurisdiction in disputes.
Filings are due next month by groups backing E. Pierce Marshall.
Someone should just shoot this bitch in the head and put everyone out of our misery.
Zanchief wrote:
Harrison wrote:I'm not dead
Fucker never listens to me. That's it, I'm an atheist.
"I think you may be confusing government running amok with government doing stuff you don't like. See, you're in the minority now. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco." - Jon Stewart
Not that I like Anna dumb as a sack of bricks Smith, but there's no way you can tell me that man didn't know exactly why she was marrying him. He wanted someone to smile at him and flash boobies for the little time he had left. I'm sure he got exactly what he expected from the relationship. If he left/promised the money to her, why should his estranged (there were family tensions yes?) child get to claim it just because his father married a young bimbo. What if the man had married a lovely 88 yr old Texas woman, would she be more entitled to the money?
I could be wrong Haylo, because I quit following this story years ago, but I think it was proven in court that they never consummated the marriage, and also that she couldnt prove that he had intended to leave her anything. She wasn't in the will.
Zanchief wrote:
Harrison wrote:I'm not dead
Fucker never listens to me. That's it, I'm an atheist.
Id hit it post trimspa -- or whatever that crack in a pill is called.
Captain_Insano wrote: It's also Abraham Lincoln's fault for freeing the slaves. Had he been shot earlier black people wouldn't have email accounts and internet access.
