For Anna Nicole and Marshall Family: Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

Anna Nicole Smith, the dysfunctional former Playmate of the Year whose very public life ended all too tragically, may finally be getting some measure of justice. The state attorney’s office in Broward County, Florida, said last week it was reopening its investigation into her February 2007 death by what had been deemed “an accidental overdose.”

The news comes less than two weeks after two doctors and Howard K. Stern, the former Playboy and Guess Jeans model’s erstwhile Svengali, were arrested by California authorities on charges they illegally conspired to provide Smith with thousands of prescription pills. Broward State Attorney spokesman Ron Ishoy, told the press his office was taking a fresh look at things. This includes examining the evidence collected by California officials to see “where it might lead in relation to Ms. Smith’s death.”

It’s about time. While Anna Nicole Smith, aka Vicki Lynn Marshall, was not exactly a paragon of virtue she is nevertheless entitled to the same degree of justice that the rest of us are.

It was all too easy to believe the original, “official” version of the events surrounding her death, especially in an era in which celebrities who appear far more grounded in reality than Anna Nicole ever did on her eponymous television series, are professionally disabled by, and even die from substance abuse. And now it appears there may be something more to it than originally believed, a lot more.

But Anna Nicole is not the only one who deserves a measure of justice. It is all too easy to forget that at the time of her death she was involved in an ongoing legal battle that began after she learned she had been left out of her husband’s will. That husband, octogenarian billionaire J. Howard Marshall, died just 14 months into the marriage, leaving Anna Nicole nothing but her claim he had promised her a significant bequest without telling anyone but her of his intentions.

She sued, and lost, in a Texas probate court. And, sensing that things in Texas weren’t going her way, she also sued – and won — an astonishing $447 million from a California bankruptcy court, a decision her lawyers argued nullified the defeat in Texas.

The case of Marshall v. Marshall, astonishingly enough, was appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court, complete with an appearance by Anna Nicole. The oral arguments created a media circus; the court’s ruling perpetuated a legal one. In essence, the Supreme Court found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (which includes California) had been overly broad in assuming the case could only have been heard in Texas when, on appeal, they tossed out Anna Nicole’s original victory. Then they sent it back to the Ninth Circuit for “further review,” where it remains today.

Shortly before his arrest, Howard K. Stern petitioned Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy, who has administrative oversight of the Ninth Circuit, to lean on the panel of judges reviewing the case. They were, in effect, asking Justice Kennedy to order the Ninth Circuit to act, immediately, and in a way favorable to the interests of the now-departed Anna Nicole Smith despite her legal team’s failure to prove the merits of her case in two states. And in a way that would let them have access to some of the $88.5 million judgment a California federal court ruled Anna Nicole was entitled to.

That money is, at the moment, off limits by order of the Ninth Circuit. And Kennedy said, “No.”

It is not knowable whether the arrest of Howard K. Stern and two physicians in California or the reexamining of the circumstances of Anna Nicole’s death by the Broward County State Attorney’s Office will have an influence on the thinking of any of the judges being asked to render a decision in the matter of Marshall v. Marshall, not from a human standpoint anyway. The legal argument that the case must be decided on its merits, and not based on extraneous matters is clear.

And it may not matter much that the original litigants in the case, Anna Nicole and Marshall’s son E. Pierce Marshall, are now both dead and that only the lawsuit survives. But was does matter is that, as much as Anna Nicole deserves justice regarding the circumstances of her death, the surviving members of the Marshall family regarding the disposition and distribution of J. Howard Marshall’s estate deserve justice too.