Smith’s body and baby are not pawns but pawn tickets as motives, money and new law suits take shape
By Jeffrey Jolson
No longer pawns,
but pawn tickets
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 2/27/07 – The known value of Anna Nicole Smith’s legacy has already passed the $10 million mark, more than she ever made from Hollywood projects in her tragic lifetime. And that’s before 99% of the post-mortem deals are done or the big prize of $587 million is taken into account.
As courts in two countries hear arguments today in over who gets to further cash in on body and baby, rumors abound that Smith companion Howard K. Stern and ex-boyfriend are in settlement negotiations that would rein in some of the properties and rights before they go to Smith’s mother, the State or other parties.
With the value of the house she lived in while in the Bahamas going up from $900,000 to an asking price of $10 million and a $1 million contract for her funeral video rights being bandied about in courtrooms, the size of the profits to be made from her sad story is just being unveiled.
Negotiations for likeness and rights, video footage, book and TV movie deals, boats, houses, mementos, etc. are going on now for many millions more.
In addition increasingly large groups of attorneys are jockeying in court for pole position for the race first for the body, then for the baby. They are no longer pawns in the legal battles, but pawn tickets.
If the legal appeal over burial rights to Smith’s decomposing body on Wednesday in Florida courts seems cruel and pointless, it’s yes on the first count, no on the second. Whoever gets the corpse, gets the reported $1 million check for video exclusives of the funeral. They’ll need it for legal fees as a far more important factor is that whoever buries Anna Nicole gets to “open the estate” and have first crack at the estate of billionaire Howard Marshall, according to attorneys.
Whatever the parties tearfully say about what they think is best for Anna Nicole and baby Dannielynn, keep your eyes on the money, because the attorneys sure are.
“There can be no other reason, no other thing going on than the race to open the estate,” said observing defense attorney Geoffrey Fieger, “Because whoever does can file the claim against Marshall’s estate. The entire thing boils down to this and all the lawyers know it. The Supreme Court of the United States granted the rights for Smith to go after the Marshall estate again, and that’s no small thing. Everyone else will have to stand in line behind whoever opens the estate.”
In oral arguments today, attorneys in appellate court in Broward County, Florida, attorneys for Smith’s mother Virgie Arthur battle against Stern and the baby’s guardian to say the body should go to Texas, not the Bahamas as was ruled last week in the no-holds-barred televised hearings last week.
Thirty minutes away by air, lawyers in the Bahamas will take on first the home of Anna Nicole then start etching the surface of the paternity/custody issues, still muddled by Stern’s steadfast refusal to allow a DNA test on baby Dannielynn. His attorneys continue to sidestep the question that everyone watching around the world says make him look guilty.
Indeed, ex boyfriend Larry Birkhead seems to be whom the court of world opinion favors as father, as indicated by cheers as he arrived at Bahamas locales. More significant is that his fraud claims against Stern and the birth certificate (unsigned by Stern) began before or by November 2006. Plus he testified Anna Nicole had him sign Dannielynn’s baby book as father and Stern as uncle.
In addition, Birkhead being allowed to see the baby portends well for a Stern-Birkhead arrangement, says TMZ.com, which said Stern is willing to hand over custody for money. The site says Stern will cash in for unspecified assets including a boat she purchased just before her death and a Bahamas house other than the contested mansion.
Pinder also mentioned a house Thompson would be willing to let Stern and baby move to, so they could affect a quick mansion sale without making the baby homeless.
Stern may not care if his popularity poll falls if his income rises. He had no income for the last two years except what Anna Nicole gave him, according to his court testimony. Yet the sooner he settles the paternity question the better, according to family law attorney Raoul Felder.
Anna Nicole
“Not only shouldn’t any of them get custody, none of them are qualified to be a guardian, even remotely so,” said Felder during Court TV’s wall-to-wall coverage. “I wouldn’t trust them with $40 much less the $400 million that may be involved.”
He added “Then there’s the matter of the circumstances. You had people of 20 and 39 years old die. The same person was with them. You had testimony that the person present at death gave narcotics to the other people. If this was New York City, you’d have the homicide squad investigating this.”
On the home front, the status of the contested mansion that is inhabited by Stern and Dannielynn is about to be decided in the Bahamas and the lawyer repping the house’s owner says the State is giving celebrity-fed advantages to Smith, and by extension, Stern.
He claims Stern has been staying there without legal rights in a situation that would normally see an inhabitant unceremoniously kicked out as a squatter.
“She is a celebrity and has influence with them,” said owner G. Ben Thompson’s attorney Godfrey Pinder. “We cannot get into court (to get an eviction order) because they keep blocking it.”
Pinder did say the following was true: That Anna Nicole dated and slept with Thompson. She later asked to use a house in the Bahamas, and told him he could be the father of her unborn baby. He told her he had a vasectomy and she asked for use of the house anyway. He said ok, if you sign a note for $900,000.
Pinder said she moved in and when he later gave her the promissory note to sign, she tore it up in his face, cursing. She claimed Thompson gave her the house, which was one of the prerequisites for her fast-track residency.
The residency, like almost everything else in this case has either sex or drugs involved. The immigration minister that fast-tracked her residency papers had to resign after pictures were published in Nassau newspapers showing the (clothed) couple hugging in bed.
In filings Tuesday with the Florida 4th District Court of Appeal, attorneys for Smith’s boyfriend and her infant daughter claimed Smith’s estranged mother was trying to “place her in death where she never wanted to be in life” — Texas, according to AP reports. In an earlier filing, Milstein said that “every witness including Arthur testified that Anna Nicole Smith expressed an interest in being buried in either California or the Bahamas” and as “a matter of undisputable law, Dannielynn is her mother’s ‘next of kin’; Arthur is not.”
Arthur’s lawyer, Roberta G. Mandel, said her client was willing to take the fight to the state Supreme Court. “This mother is a mother who deserves the right to bury her child,” Mandel said.
Birkhead also wants a Fort Lauderdale court to enforce a California judge’s orders so he can get DNA samples from Smith’s body and the baby. Broward Family Court Judge Lawrence Korda is expected to rule on that request Wednesday.
All told, the sad fact remains: Like an artist, Anna Nicole is worth more dead than alive.