A US judge has awarded former Playboy pin-up Anna Nicole Smith an $88.5 million payout in the latest ruling in the bitter legal battle over the estate of her late husband J Howard Marshall, a Texas oil tycoon. California district court judge David Carter ruled Thursday that Marshall’s son, E Pierce Marshall, had interfered with Anna’s attempts to claim part of her late husband’s fortune, which is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The evidence of wilfulness, maliciousness and fraud is overwhelming,” the judge wrote. He found that E Pierce Marshall and others had spied on the couple and controlled his father’s access to money to deny the 34-year-old nightclub dancer the sums she was promised.
“This is a complete victory for my client,” said Anna’s lawyer. “I think it’s a victory for a husband’s love for his wife, and it shows the world that love has no age limits.”
Coming as the latest milestone in a six-year legal fight, the latest development dramatically slashes the award from the $450 million handed to Anna by another court in 2000. That ruling was later repealed.
The tycoon’s son released a statement saying he would appeal the decision and his father “would be appalled that the district court continued to ignore his wishes”.
Anna married Marshall, who was 63 years her senior, in 1994 after meeting him in a nightclub in Houston, Texas. When he died 14 months later, a court battle erupted between the former Playboy Playmate and the tycoon’s son, himself in his mid-sixties, over her claims that her late husband promised her half his fortune, which had been willed in its entirety to his son. Anna’s claim rested on a cassette tape she recorded months before Marshall’s death in August 1995, in which the elderly tycoon requested that, “my wife be taken care of”.
Judge Carter said Anna was enitled to $44.3 million in punitive damages and the same amount in compensatory damages against E Pierce Marshall. Both parties were absent when the ruling was issued.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
