Judge Voids Big Award to Anna Nicole Smith

A federal judge in Santa Ana on Thursday vacated the $475-million judgment former Playboy pinup and Guess jeans model Anna Nicole Smith had been awarded against her billionaire husband’s estate.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled that the award Smith won in bankruptcy court in September required a full review and ordered attorneys to give him case transcripts, court documents and exhibits.

Carter had two issues to decide, said Smith’s attorney Rex Heinke: whether the federal court or a probate court in Texas had jurisdiction over the case, and whether the bankruptcy court had “core” or “non-core” jurisdiction.

The judge ruled that the federal court had jurisdiction but that Smith’s claim was a non-core bankruptcy issue.

That means that bankruptcy Judge Samuel L. Bufford’s award to Smith is now a recommendation to Carter, Heinke said.

Smith’s stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, 64, had appealed Bufford’s judgment for Smith.

Carter called his ruling neither a victory nor defeat for either side and ordered the attorneys to appear June 4 to discuss motions and possible appeals.

In a prepared statement released after Carter’s decision, Marshall said his goal was “to have the district court review all the evidence in this case, which will show conclusively that Vicky’s claims have absolutely no merit.”

Smith, whose legal name is Vickie Lynn Marshall, was 26 when she married 89-year-old Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994. Marshall died in August 1995, 14 months later.

When Marshall’s health began to fail a few months after the marriage, his son Pierce asked the court to appoint him his father’s legal guardian. He then froze all of his father’s accounts.

Bufford ruled in September that Pierce Marshall deliberately interfered with Smith’s ability to inherit her share of her husband’s estimated $2-billion fortune.

Six months later, Smith, 33, lost a Texas court battle over her late husband’s fortune when a jury ruled in favor of Pierce Marshall and found that the tycoon made no agreement to leave part of his estate to her or to another son, J. Howard Marshall III.