A federal judge is set to decide whether to impose sanctions of up to $44 million against the estate of Anna Nicole Smith’s former stepson, the National Law Journal reported today. The sanctions come in a claim originally filed by E. Pierce Marshall, the son of Smith’s late husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall, against the former Playboy model, who had filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection. The younger Marshall died in 2006 and Smith died of a drug overdose in 2007. Just before a hearing on Monday, U.S. District Judge David Carter in the Central District of California wrote in a tentative order that he had several “open questions” left unresolved as to the scope of sanctions he ordered last year against the younger Marshall’s estate. He has tentatively scheduled a trial on the matter for April 29.
