Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: MON 10/25/1999
Anna Nicole Smith back in court over oilman's fortune
By RON NISSIMOV
Staff
A Harris County judge will be asked today to halt a bankruptcy court proceeding in California that could make 1993 "Playmate of the Year" Anna Nicole Smith one of the richest women in America.
Smith, the former Guess? jeans model who says in court papers she was "a poor but beautiful girl . . . with scarcely two pennies to rub together" when she met Houston oilman J. Howard Marshall II in 1991, claims she is entitled to one-half of his estimated $1 billion fortune as a result of their 14-month marriage.
But when Marshall died in 1995 at age 90, his purported 1992 will left everything to the youngest of his two sons, E. Pierce Marshall, 60, of Dallas, who had taken over the family business.
Marshall's eldest son, J. Howard Marshall III, 63, who owns a Los Angeles electronics company, was allegedly disinherited in 1980 over a family business dispute.
Smith and the eldest son claimed they were owed half of the estate and that E. Pierce Marshall fraudulently transferred all the wealth to himself. They sued in Harris County probate court, and Smith made the same claims in a Los Angeles federal bankruptcy court after filing for bankruptcy protection there in 1996.
In May, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Samuel Bufford sanctioned E. Pierce Marshall for allegedly destroying evidence and not showing up for depositions.
The judge stipulated that Smith is entitled to what she is seeking, an estimated $500 million. E. Pierce Marshall's attorneys have denied doing anything warranting such severe sanctions.
A trial is scheduled to start Wednesday in Bufford's court to finalize his orders and hear other matters related to the bankruptcy petition. Last week, attorneys for J. Howard Marshall III asked to intervene in the bankruptcy case to protect their client's interests.
E. Pierce Marshall's attorneys believe only Harris County has jurisdiction over the will because probate petitions were filed here first. Last week, the attorneys filed a motion asking Harris County Probate Judge Mike Wood to delay the bankruptcy proceeding until after the matter is resolved here.
Wood, who has scheduled a Jan. 24 trial to probate the will, is scheduled to hold an emergency hearing today on the motion.
"She's trying to get a bankruptcy judge to give her what she knows a Harris County jury will never give her," said Rusty Hardin, one of the several attorneys representing E. Pierce Marshall.
Attorneys for Smith and J. Howard Marshall III could not be reached for comment.
In her court papers, the buxom blonde from Mexia says that soon after Marshall first laid eyes on her while she was working as a 19-year-old topless dancer at Rick's Cabaret, she became his "reason for living." She says that shortly before they met, Marshall, 86 at the time, "had lost any real interest in his life and fell into a depression punctuated by alcoholism" because his longtime younger mistress, Jewell DiAnne "Lady" Walker, died of complications from plastic surgery.
Smith said Marshall - a Yale Law School graduate who was a high-ranking oil regulator under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and then a prominent oil executive and entrepreneur - promised her half his estate if she would marry him, which she did in 1994.
Smith, whose legal name is Vickie Lynn Marshall, filed for bankruptcy protection after Marshall's death because of mounting bills and what her lawyers called "questionable lawsuits," including an $860,000 default judgment given to a former maid who claimed Smith had sexually assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 1993.
The former model was also seeking protection from a lawsuit filed by E. Pierce Marshall, who sued Smith and two of her attorneys in 1995 for libel over comments made to the media, including the Houston Chronicle.
E. Pierce Marshall intervened in Smith's bankruptcy filing in Los Angeles to try to protect his interest in the libel suit, and Smith countersued him by alleging estate fraud.
(In 1998, a Dallas state district court jury ordered Smith's former attorney Diana Marshall and her Houston law firm to pay E. Pierce Marshall $8.5 million, but the suit was settled later for $804,000. The lawyer is not related to the oil family. A suit against another Smith attorney, Suzanne Kornblit of Houston, was settled for a confidential amount in 1997.)
According to documents filed by E. Pierce Marshall's attorneys last week in Harris County, U.S. District Judge William D. Keller of Los Angeles said in October 1998 that "this lawsuit is a Texas lawsuit" and it should be tried in Houston.
But after Bufford gave Keller a "secret internal document not available to the parties," Keller refused to remove the estate dispute out of Bufford's bankruptcy court, E. Pierce Marshall's attorneys said.
"The bankruptcy (judge's) apparent plan is to ignore the limits on his jurisdiction and to race to . . . adjudicate Vickie's claims to the probate estate," according to E. Pierce Marshall's legal filings.
Much of Marshall's wealth was tied up in stock of Koch Industries, an oil pipeline and mineral conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., that is the country's second-largest privately held firm.
A 1980 squabble among the four sons of Fred Koch, the founder of Koch Industries, led to the rift between Marshall and his eldest son.
Bill Koch headed a dissident group who wanted the company to go public. The dissidents were able to garner 48 percent of the Koch voting stock, and Bill Koch knew that the Marshall brothers each had 4 percent of the voting stock.
Bill Koch needed only to persuade one of the brothers to join the dissidents to get the company to go public, a move he knew J. Howard Marshall II would vehemently oppose. E. Pierce Marshall declined to join the dissidents, but his older brother agreed to do so.
J. Howard Marshall II got wind of the deal and bought his son's voting stock for $8 million to thwart the effort. Attorneys for E. Pierce Marshall have said that the father never forgave his son for betraying him and disinherited him.
J. Howard Marshall III said he agreed to the sale only because his father threatened to disinherit him if he did not cooperate, and he promised to will his son one-half of the estate if he did cooperate. He said he was offered $24 million for the stock, and it would have made no sense to sell at $8 million without the assurance of an inheritance.
E. Pierce Marshall's attorneys said the eldest son accepted the $8 million because he needed it for his electronics company. They have introduced into evidence a letter that J. Howard Marshall III wrote to his mother in 1992, saying he "decided to live with the consequences" of the "threat of disinheritance."
A trial over the two brothers' estate claims began in July 1998, but former Harris County Probate Judge Jim Scanlan ordered a mistrial after two weeks because he was unhappy with lawyers' courtroom statements.
Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SAT 07/16/1994
Guess? model, 26, marries/Smith weds 89-year-old wealthy Houstonian
By GLEN GOLIGHTLY, DEBORAH TEDFORD
Staff
Anna Nicole Smith, the Houston-born actress and model who posed provocatively for Guess? jeans ads and in Playboy magazine, has married a wealthy Houston oil executive who was 63 years old when she was born.
Smith, 26, married J. Howard Marshall II, 89, of 11100 Meadowick, according to a marriage license filed with the Harris County Clerk.
In 1989, Marshall was listed by the Chronicle as one of Houston's wealthiest residents as head of oil-based Koch Industries -- part of a family fortune worth about $400 million. In that year, he was ranked 56th in a list of 100 wealthiest Texans by Texas Monthly magazine.
A receptionist at Marshall's office declined to give her name, but said the couple were married here and that he was out of town.
The New York-based Elite modeling agency, which represents Smith, refused to comment on the marriage.
Marshall and Smith were unavailable for comment Friday.
Smith, whose real name is Vickie Lynn Hogan, grew up in Mexia and has a son from a previous marriage to Billy Smith.
The statuesque 5-foot, 11-inch model's career took off in 1992 after she was selected as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for May 1992 and later as Playmate of the Year. Smith later posed as a Guess? jeans model in print advertisements.
Smith also has had small acting roles in "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "Naked Gun 33 1/3."
In February, Smith and a friend were taken to a Beverly Hills, Calif., hospital after mixing prescription drugs with alcohol.
Smith and Daniel C. Ross had taken unknown amounts of alcohol and the prescription drugs Vicodin and Xanax.
She also is accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting her child's nanny and has filed a notice removing the case to a Houston federal court.
Maria Antonia Cerrato alleged Smith began making sexual overtures to her shortly after she began working for Smith as a housekeeper and nanny for Smith's child in May 1992.
A Honduras native, Cerrato claims she spoke little English and did not fully understand the reasons Smith was sexually harassing her. She began to realize that Smith wanted a sexual relationship when she discovered Smith had had sex with two other women, the lawsuit states.
T. Patrick Freydl, Smith's attorney, could not be reached for comment.
During the nearly 18 months Cerrato worked for Smith, the model gave Cerrato clothing, jewelry and even a car, according to the lawsuit. But Cerrato maintained she was not interested in a lesbian relationship.
Cerrato, now 23, said Smith sexually assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room on May 6, 1993, after the two returned from a nightclub and became intoxicated on alcohol and drugs.
Cerrato, who now lives in Houston, said she endured the situation for six months because she needed her job and because she was embarrassed. She said in the suit that she was "a virtual prisoner" in Smith's Los Angeles home from May 1993 until November 1993, being allowed outside only when accompanied by Smith or Smith's chauffeur.
On Nov. 7, 1993, Cerrato said Smith's chauffeur/bodyguard ordered Cerrato out of the Los Angeles house. She was not permitted to take her personal property at the time, and has since recovered only a few of her belongings.
Martha E. Garza, attorney for Cerrato, said she began negotiating with Smith's attorney in February.
She said she believed they had reached an agreement when Smith abruptly filed suit in California on May 19 against Cerrato.
Garza filed suit in state court in Houston last month.