Home » Latest » Celebrity » Whatever Happened To Anna Nicole’s Lawyer Howard K Stern

Whatever Happened To Anna Nicole’s Lawyer Howard K Stern

4

39 0 Celebrity

7.5

SaveSavedRemoved 2

Anna Nicole Smith’s death didn’t end the story — it just handed the spotlight to the lawyer who never left her side.

Howard K. Stern spent nearly a decade tied to one of the most chaotic sagas in modern tabloid history, first as Anna Nicole Smith’s attorney, then as her partner, and finally as the man prosecutors tried to blame for her fatal overdose. He co-starred alongside her on E!’s The Anna Nicole Show, fought a paternity battle over her infant daughter, and argued a case that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s where that road actually led him.

• Stern represented Smith for years in the fight over the $1.6 billion estate of her late husband, oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall, a dispute that produced the landmark 2011 Supreme Court decision Stern v. Marshall.
• After Dannielynn’s birth in September 2006, Stern was listed as the father on her birth certificate before DNA testing proved photographer Larry Birkhead was the biological father.
• Stern was convicted on two felony conspiracy counts in 2010 over prescription drugs given to Smith, only for a judge to dismiss the convictions in 2011, an appeals court to reinstate them in 2012, and a judge to dismiss them for good in 2015.

From Legal Counsel To Reality TV Co-Star

Stern, a UC Berkeley and UCLA School of Law graduate, met Smith in the 1990s and became her attorney and eventually her agent as she navigated life after her Playboy fame. The relationship deepened as Stern took on Smith’s business affairs, and the pairing became must-watch television when E! launched The Anna Nicole Show in 2002, with Stern appearing alongside her for two seasons through 2004. Anyone curious about the world Smith came from before Stern entered it can find more detail in what living in the Playboy Mansion was really like.

The Marshall Fortune And Stern v. Marshall

The legal fight that first brought Stern into Smith’s orbit was the multi-decade battle over the estate of J. Howard Marshall, the 89-year-old oil tycoon Smith married in 1994. As Smith’s attorney and later the executor of her estate, Stern carried the fight over Marshall’s $1.6 billion fortune all the way to the nation’s highest court.

The Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Stern v. Marshall limited the constitutional authority of non-Article III bankruptcy judges, a decision still cited in federal courtrooms today.

A Wedding, A Death, And A Paternity Fight

In September 2006, Smith gave birth to a daughter, Dannielynn, and Stern was listed as the father on the birth certificate. The couple held a non-binding commitment ceremony in the Bahamas around that time — days before Smith’s 20-year-old son, Daniel, died suddenly while visiting her in the hospital. Smith herself died of an accidental drug overdose in Florida in February 2007, setting off a bitter paternity dispute that played out on cable news for months until DNA testing proved photographer Larry Birkhead, not Stern, was Dannielynn’s biological father.

Prescription Charges And Courtroom Reversals

In 2009, California prosecutors criminally charged Stern along with two physicians, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich and Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, alleging they repeatedly funneled excessive prescription drugs to Smith under false aliases. A jury convicted Stern on two felony conspiracy counts in 2010, but the trial judge threw out those convictions in 2011, citing insufficient evidence. An appellate court reinstated the charges in 2012, only for a judge to dismiss the remaining felony counts for good in 2015 — closing out a legal odyssey that outlasted the marriage, the custody fight, and Smith herself. The case remains one of the messier examples of celebrity legal exposure covered in the biggest celebrity prison sentences that were cut short.

By the time the last charge was dismissed, Stern had spent the better part of a decade in courtrooms tied to Smith’s name. He remains a licensed member of the State Bar of California, having stepped almost entirely out of public view since the criminal case finally closed in 2015.