Supreme Court Deals with Greed, Sex and Deception

Older men and younger women - an age-old story. But an 89-year-old rolling into a strip club on a wheelchair and later marrying the stripper takes this idea to a whole new level. The Economist reports on what happened next.

THE words "probate exception" do not titillate. And yet a saucy, decade-long legal battle over a fortune of nearly half a billion dollars hinges on this clause, which deals with the boundaries between state and federal courts in estate disputes. At issue is whether Vickie Lynn Marshall, a former Playboy pin-up and exotic dancer better known as Anna Nicole Smith, will get anything from the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall, an oil tycoon with assets estimated at $1.6 billion.

On May 1st, Ms Smith won an important victory. Although her inheritance remains uncertain, the United States Supreme Court (no less) unanimously ruled that she could pursue her case in federal court. One suspects the justices were enjoying themselves, for once.

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