Justices Reinstate Smith's Claim

The Supreme Court handed a victory to former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith in the battle over her late husband's fortune yesterday, ruling that the California federal courts that awarded her tens of millions of dollars had not exceeded their authority.

Smith's stepson had contended that the federal rulings were invalid because state courts control inheritance matters and a Texas state probate court had already given him the entire estate. But the Supreme Court rejected that claim in a unanimous decision, ruling that there is no such broad "probate exception" to federal court jurisdiction.

Instead, wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the exception is narrow, and bars federal court intervention only in the actual verification of wills and administration of estates. Smith's claim -- that her husband's son had fraudulently thwarted her husband's intent to give her some of the estate -- was a legally separate issue that could be heard in the appropriate federal forum, Ginsburg wrote.

"Under our federal system," Ginsburg wrote, "Texas cannot render its probate courts exclusively competent to entertain a claim of that genre."

Also yesterday, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. issued his first opinion for the court since taking office Jan. 31. Alito's opinion overturned the conviction of a South Carolina death-row inmate, on the grounds that state courts had wrongly forbidden defense lawyers to present evidence that someone else had committed the crime.

Notwithstanding yesterday's ruling in favor of Smith, it could be many years, if ever, until she collects any money. Her late husband's son, E. Pierce Marshall, issued a statement declaring that he intended to continue fighting the case, based on issues not covered by the Supreme Court ruling.

"After eleven years of litigation, even Smith's own attorneys acknowledge they have failed to present a single witness to support her claim that anyone interfered in my father's business affairs before or after his death," the statement said. "I will continue to fight to uphold my father's estate plan and clear my name."

"Every step of the way in this legal battle, Pierce Marshall's lawyers have claimed they would prevail including in the Supreme Court," Smith's lawyer, Kent Richland, countered in a statement. "We are confident that the [lower federal court] will have no problem in ruling in our favor on the issues that remain."

Although the legal issues involved were relatively technical, the case was one of the most colorful to reach the court in recent years, and oral argument on Feb. 22 turned into a media event when the 38-year-old Smith showed up at the court.

Until 1991, Anna Nicole Smith was Vickie Lynn Smith, a divorcee with a young son she supported by working as a stripper in Houston. That year, she met J. Howard Marshall II, an 86-year-old billionaire, who fell in love with her. In 1994, she agreed to marry him, in return for what she said was his promise of "half of everything I have."

Showered by J. Howard with money and expensive gifts, Vickie Lynn Smith changed her name, posed for Playboy, and went on tour as a spokesmodel for Guess Jeans.

Smith contends that she was denied her rightful inheritance after J. Howard's death in 1995 because E. Pierce Marshall forged and altered documents.