US Supreme Court rules in favour of Ex-playmate (Updated)

May 1, 2006, 17:14 GMT

Washington - Former Playmate Anna Nicole Smith will continue her legal battle for a portion of her late billionaire husband's estate, after the US Supreme Court on Monday reversed a lower court decision that barred federal courts from ruling on the matter.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court said that federal courts did have a right to intervene in Smith's case against her late husband's youngest son, E. Pierce Marshall, because it involved allegations of fraud, rather than merely a probate proceeding on the contents of Howard Marshall's will.

Smith married billionaire oil tycoon J Howard Marshall in 1994, when he was 89 and she was 26. He died 14 months later, and Smith claimed a part of his inheritance, arguing that Marshall's son E. Pierce Marshall altered the will after the tycoon's death to exclude her from her rightful due.

The case before the justices involved a technical question concerning jurisdiction. A federal district court in California last year awarded Smith 89 million dollars based on 'overwhelming' evidence that Pierce had acted fraudulently in preventing Smith from being awarded any of her late husband's estate.

But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the ruling, arguing the case was a purely probate matter that should be dealt with in state courts and thereby upheld an earlier Texas court ruling that sided with E Pierce Marshall and awarded Smith nothing.

'The Ninth Circuit had no warrant from Congress, or this court's decisions, for its sweeping extension of the probate exception,' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote.

The Supreme Court ruling sent the case back to the lower federal courts for further hearings. The legal battle has been ongoing since 1996.

The case had brought an unusual amount of drama and media attention to the Supreme Court, as the former Playboy model Smith wept in the courtroom as her late husband was discussed in oral arguments.