Anna Nicole Smith Awarded $449 Million

By Stephen M. Silverman

07/21/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Anna Nicole Smith Awarded $449 Million Former Playboy Playmate of the Year and Guess jeans model Anna Nicole Smith, 32, is in the money. Yesterday a federal bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles awarded her $449.7 million, her claim to the estate of her late billionaire husband, Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall. Some estimates of Marshall's fortune had been placed as high as $1.6 billion. (The two were married in 1994, when he was 89 and she was 26 and working as a stripper. He died a year later.) Smith's attorney, Philip Boesch Jr., informed the Associated Press that his client, who in the court proceedings used her married name of Vickie Lynn Marshall, was "very pleased" with Judge Samuel Bufford's ruling, which he believes "puts the matter to rest." Smith's legal battle was with her late husband's youngest son, E. Pierce Marshall. He called yesterday's decision a "miscarriage of justice" and vowed to appeal.