Irvine Heiress, Mother Finally Settle Lawsuit : Real estate: Joan Irvine Smith says she plans to give much of the payment to charity.

Now that she has settled an eight-year lawsuit against Irvine Co., Newport Beach multimillionaire Joan Irvine Smith says one of her first priorities will be donations to charities.

Smith and her mother, Athalie R. Clarke, got less than they wanted Tuesday in settling the long-running dispute but still walked away with more than a quarter of a billion dollars. The money, which was wired into each of their bank accounts, is payment for their stock in the giant landowner, which was founded by Smith’s grandfather in the 19th Century and which still owns a sixth of Orange County.

“I’ve got an opportunity to go ahead and do what I said I would do--it is one of the first orders of business,” said the 58-year-old heiress.

She had said she would hand out millions of dollars from the stock sale to a variety of causes, most of them linked to UC Irvine or agencies dedicated to improving the environment.

Smith said she is consulting with her tax attorneys on the size of the gifts and how they will be structured. Most of the charity-directed funds will be placed in a foundation on whose board she will serve as president and her mother as vice president. She said the foundation will determine how much to give to particular organizations.

Smith and Clarke had asked for almost $300 million apiece for the 5.5% stake each held in the company, but were each awarded $128 million after a lengthy trial. They elected to drop an appeal that could have taken years and millions of dollars more in lawyers’ fees.

The settlement ends a long, bitter lawsuit that pitted two of Orange County’s richest and most prominent people: Billionaire Donald L. Bren, 59, one of the nation’s wealthiest men, and Smith, 58, who once rode horses on the sprawling family ranch. The ranch eventually became one of the world’s largest real estate empires.