No justice for Vickie Lynn? So says her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, who used Anna Nicole Smith's birth name in discussing the Dec. 30 decision of an appeals court in San Francisco to strip the former stripper of an $88.5 million inheritance (serious times-not to mention serious bucks—call for serious names). "An absolute injustice," said Stern. The ruling reverses that of a California district court and entitles E. Pierce Marshall, the youngest son of oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, to the disputed share of his father's fortune, though Stern contends he "deprived Vickie Lynn Marshall of the property her husband intended her to have." "Pierce," says David Margulies, a spokesman for Smith's former stepson, 66, "feels vindicated because the federal court upheld the Texas court's ruling that he did nothing to interfere with his father's estate." Smith, 37, meanwhile, spat her own irreverent take to a Las Vegas reporter: "The judges were so paid off!"

Smith plans to appeal the decision—to, she says, the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Until then the E! reality star will continue to earn her own living: She remains a spokeswoman for TrimSpa diet pills. Says Stern: "It's not like this [decision] will change her life."