The worlds of celebrity and justice have seldom collided with a more thunderous thud than they did yesterday in the austere environment of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
In the same courtroom wherein issues of such gravitas as Brown v. Topeka, Times v. Sullivan and Gideon v. Wainwright were argued, the nine justices on Tuesday took up Anna Nicole Smith's dispute against her deceased billionaire husband's family.
It was a demonstration of what I think is one of the great things about this country: that anyone, and I mean anyone, may petition the highest court in the nation when their rights come into conflict with the constitutional powers of federal and state governments. Even if that person is a former stripper turned Playboy Playmate; even if she is someone whose claim to fame is nothing more than she is famous.
Anna Nicole (or Vickie Lynn, as the court documents call her) was respectful, tastefully dressed and quiet inside the marbled halls of Justice, even if the scrum of paparazzi and cable news reporters outside the court were not. Totally above and oblivious to that external circus-like atmosphere, the justices heard the appellate arguments in Marshall v. Marshall .
Of course, the whole thing might have been prevented if someone had insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement.
Most people know the basics of the case: that, before his death, 89-year-old billionaire oil baron J. Howard Marshall planned to give his 26-year-old wife of two years a trust fund amounting to half of an estate estimated at $1.6 billion-with-a-B. However, in a series of events worthy of an episode of Dallas, Marshall's heir, Pierce Marshall, is alleged to have forged documents, hired detectives to keep Anna Nicole from Marshall's deathbed, and eventuallyeliminated the promised trust fund.
Of course, the Supreme Court does not take on cases involving frivolous celebrities as a publicity stunt. As with all cases that reach this apellate level, the justices took on this case because it wanted to resolve a jurisdictional conflict between state and federal courts.
A Texas probate court had originally determined that Anna Nicole was entitled to nothing except the $6 million in gifts she had received from Marshall during their life together (his will did not mention her and the trust had not been completed at his death.) The case crossed into federal jurisdiction when Anna Nicole declared bankruptcy in California. Anna Nicole didn't challenge the probate; only Pierce Marshall's fraudulent actions. The federal court ruled that because of those actions, Anna Nicole was entitled to $450 million from the trust, plus $25 million in punitive damages. A federal district court reduced the trust award to $88 million. When the case was sent to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, that court said that the federal bankruptcy court should never have involved itself in a ruling by the Texas probate court.
If the Supreme Court rules that the 9th Circuit Court was right, then the immediate effect will be that the probate court's ruling will be upheld and Anna Nicole will get nothing from the trust.
If, however, the Supremes rule with Anna Nicole that the bankruptcy court can expand its jurisdiction beyond the "probate exception," then the effect will erase that 200-year-old exception and could significantly change how courts handle estate issues.
This more-conservative court, with the freshly minted Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito, is supposed to disfavor federal courts crossing over into state jurisdictions. But it should be noted that in their questions from the bench, the justices at least seemed sympathetic to Anna Nicole. And the Justice Department argued on Anna Nicole's side; a lawyer for the solicitor general's office said federal courts did have a right to intervene in state probate cases because some estate disputes involve taxation and other federal issues.
So perhaps the days of the "probate exception" are numbered.
Of course, a pre-nuptial agreement between Mr. and Mrs. Marshall could have avoided all this, as the Baltimore Sun reported two weeks ago. As I told columnist Eileen Ambrose for that article, "more people are getting married older and wealthier. And they have more to protect today than ever before."
Well, you certainly can't get much older or wealthier than J. Howard Marshall was when he married Anna Nicole. And while it therefore may not make much sense that he did not insist on a pre-nup, it would not have been extraordinary for his son to have insisted.
As I have discovered in my practice, it is very common for the adult children of one spouse to resent their parent marrying someone younger - specifically someone whose picture you might expect to find in the dictionary beside the word "golddigger." We may feel sympathy for Pierce Howard's feelings when Anna Nicole came interloping in, but that's far different from condoning his subsequent actions to cheat her. Especially since he could have restrained Anna Nicole from any golddigging by insisting that his father sign a prenup.
Of course, Howard Pierce was under no obligation to accede to such a wish, but many parents do agree to execute a prenup or a post-nuptial agreement at their children's insistence - and sometimes at the insistence of other relatives with a stake in a family business.
Oddly enough, the most sympathetic person in this whole drama is Anna Nicole, nee Vicky Lee, an ex-stripper from Mexia, Texas, who just happened to meet an old, lonely and extraordinarily rich man. All she has ever claimed to want is was what he had promised to give her.
If only the unsympathetic Pierce Marshall had insisted his dad get a pre-nup. Anna would have gotten what the old guy had promised; his son could have avoided resorting to fraud and the U.S. Supreme Court would not be poised to fundamentally alter estate law.
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