| Anna Nicole Smith, was an American model, actress and celebrity who first gained popularity as Playboy magazine's 1993 Playmate of the Year.
Her highly publicized marriage to oil business executive and billionaire J. Howard Marshall, who was 63 years her senior, resulted in considerable speculation that she married the octogenarian merely for his money, which she denied. Following his death, she began a lengthy and ongoing legal battle over a share of his estate. Her case, Marshall v. Marshall, reached the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2006 on a technical question of federal jurisdiction.
On February 8, 2007, Anna Nicole Smith was found unresponsive in a room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. At 1:38 p.m. (18:38 UTC) Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger said a nurse in Smith's sixth floor room called the hotel front desk, who in turn called security, who in turn called 911, and at 1:45 p.m. a bodyguard administered CPR before she was rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital at 2:10 p.m and pronounced DOA at 2:49 p.m. Smith's husband, Howard K. Stern, was with her when she died and has reported to Entertainment Tonight that her temperature was running high the night before.
Anna Nicole Smith passed away, but the Anna Nicole Smith litigation will live on — and multiply.
Smith's long legal battle to gain some of the millions from her billionaire late husband's estate — a case that went to the Supreme Court and produced an important ruling in 2006 — will continue despite her sudden and mysterious death Thursday in Florida.
The man she battled for a decade, her husband's son, Pierce Marshall, died just a month after the Supreme Court ruled in Smith's favor.
Smith's case, which seeks as much as $474 million from her husband's estate, is back before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Richland says, and there's no telling when it could issue a ruling. Now that Smith is dead, the parties will be Pierce Marshall's estate (his wife and sons) vs. Smith's estate (her new baby, her other relatives and possibly the man who may be her new husband).
And what about the TrimSpa litigation? The diet-products company, for which Smith was a spokeswoman, has been sued in a class-action lawsuit that claims its marketing is false or misleading. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission announced TrimSpa would pay $1.5 million to settle allegations that the company's claims about weight loss were untrue, although TrimSpa denies any wrongdoing. |
Anna Nicole Smith collapsed and passed away Thursday evening. While speculations abound about the cause of her death, lawsuits against Anna Nicole will go on to fight for her 400 million fortune inherited from her husband. Death and lawsuits are both horrible, but at least death will let go.
