An Update on the Interminable Marshall v. Marshall Saga

Longtime supporters and activists may recall CFIF’s April 2007 commentary on the absurd Anna Nicole Smith courtroom drama, and why it mattered to otherwise-disinterested American citizens. 

At that time, we described how the celebrity train wreck known as the late Anna Nicole Smith cynically filed duplicative lawsuits in multiple courts in her attempt to wrench hundreds of millions of inheritance dollars from her late husband’s estate.  Unfortunately, the different courts in which she filed lawsuits came to completely different conclusions. 

Making matters even worse, the United States Supreme Court in 2006 held that the duplicative federal court lawsuit was not preempted by the lawsuit in state court, to whom federal courts had traditionally deferred in matters applying state law.  In so doing, the Supreme Court not only increased federal intrusion into traditional state matters, but it increased the likelihood of plaintiffs filing multiple lawsuits in different courts in an effort to strike “jackpot justice.” 

The Supreme Court’s decision also undermined estate planning and philanthropies across America, because it opened the door for federal judges who are less familiar with state inheritance laws to stick their noses into traditionally state matters. 

As it turns out, even the Supreme Court’s misguided decision wasn’t the final word in this saga.  The Anna Nicole Smith case refuses to die, and its continued life illustrates the ongoing breakdown of the American judicial system. 

It seems that the notorious Howard K. Stern, the executor of Anna Nicole Smith’s will and her former lover, recently submitted an emergency application to Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy in an attempt to overturn court orders issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel overseeing the case.  The kicker is that Mr. Stern has attempted this maneuver on two previous occasions, and failed both times. 

Why, one might ask, does Mr. Stern persist in this wasteful pursuit of an increasingly unlikely pot of gold?  Perhaps the fact that Mr. Stern’s sister Bonnie recently filed her own bankruptcy petition in a Los Angeles, California court. 

We can only speculate. 

Mr. Stern’s litigiousness has dragged the involved families through years of acrimony, and wasted much of whatever inheritance Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter might have inherited from her deceased mother’s estate. There is still no end in sight. 

They say that nothing is certain in life except for death and taxes.  Today, we can add Mr. Stern’s endless, baseless litigation to that list.