Remember the tacky story of Anna Nicole Smith, the 26-year-old stripper who married the 89-year-old wheelchair-bound gazillionaire J. Howard Marshall back in 1994?
To no one’s surprise, he died a year later. But he did so without ever having bothered to include her in his will.
That’s the kind of stuff that’s tailor-made for the lawyers and sure enough, the battle lines were quickly drawn between the broken-hearted widow and the disinherited younger son Howard III on one side and the remaining children of J. Howard on the other.
The ensuing legal battle out-lived Anna Nicole, who died in 2007 at the ripe old age of 40 of an accidental prescription drug overdose.
And even though he’s been dead nearly a quarter of a century and she’s been gone for a decade, the legal jousting that began in Houston rages on—but now has moved to 14th Judicial District Court in Lake Charles.
The latest legal skirmishes involve the administration of the Marshall family trust, the appointment of one judge as a trustee for the trust, a request for the Louisiana Supreme Court to recuse the presiding judge and all manner of apparent conflicts of interest and questionable judicial conduct on the part of a third Judge, Clayton Davis.
Got it? Didn’t think so.
The common denominator that makes the entire affair one complicated messy knot is that all three judges are from the 14th Judicial District (Calcasieu Parish).
Before going any further with this, it might be helpful to provide a scorecard of the main players:
- Pierce Marshall Sr.: Prevailed in the extended legal action against Anna Nicole Smith to gain control of the trust which is governed under the Louisiana Trust Code.
- Elaine Marshall: Widow of Pierce Marshall and named by him as the sole trustee with specific power to name co-trustees.
- Lilynn Cutrer: 14th JDC judge named as one of the co-trustees of the Trust, which includes significant shares of Koch Industries, the nation’s second-largest privately-owned company. Her fee alone could be as much as $18 million, based on her projected earnings of .3 percent (that’s three-tenths of a percent) of the amount of the trust.
- Preston Marshall: Son of Pierce and Elaine Marshall who was terminated from the family business for alleged misconduct in 2015 and who is fighting for a share of the enormous trust. “At issue are billions (with a “B”) of dollars,” says his attorney, a claim denied by Elaine Marshall’s legal counsel.
- Sharon Darville Wilson: 14th JDC judge who has presided over the case for the past two years.
- Hunter Lundy: Lake Charles attorney who represents Preston Marshall and who filed a motion to recuse Judge Wilson.
- Clayton Davis: 14th JDC judge who first recused himself from ruling on the recusal motion but then signed an order requesting the Louisiana Supreme Court to assign an ad hoc judge to replace Judge Wilson.
Now here’s where it gets really sticky (as if the entire mess wasn’t slimy enough already).
Hunter Lundy has been in partnership with Clayton Davis for at least 18 years, including the 10 years since Davis’s 2008 election to the bench. Those partnerships included:
- TEXLA PROPERTIES, formed in 2000 and still active, according to records on file with the Louisiana Secretary of State.
- LLAAD, LLC, formed in 2005 but now inactive.
Both men are listed as officers of the two entities, domiciled at 501 Broad Street in Lake Charles. That is also the address of the law firm Lundy, Lundy, Soileau & Smith.
- Matt Lundy, Hunter Lundy’s brother, is listed as manager and Clayton Davis is listed as agent for TIGER SEATS, LLC, also domiciled at 501 Broad Street in Lake Charles and still an active entity. The latest report filed with the Secretary of State was on May 9 of this year.
- Moreover, Davis was also law partners with the Lundys and from his election in 2008 until last year, Judge Davis was co-owner of the office building housing the Lundy law firm.
Davis, citing his business relationship with the Lundys, properly recused himself on Friday, June 22. But five days later, on June 27, he signed a three-page order asking the Supreme Court to assign an ad hoc judge to replace Judge Wilson.
But if he had already recused himself, it would seem that he had no authority to sign the order—or anything else having anything to do with the trust—which is precisely the argument made by Baton Rouge attorney Richard Sherburne, legal counsel for Elaine Marshall.
“It has long been recognized in our civil procedure that once a judge is recused, or a motion for his recusal has been filed, he has no power to act (except to appoint the proper person to sit ad hoc when the law provides for such an appointment),” Sherburne said. “Any action taken by a recused judge is an absolute nullity,” he added. “The theory of recusation is based upon public policy, for it is applied not only for the protection of the litigants but generally to see that justice is done by an impartial court.” (emphasis Sherburne’s).
In retrospect, this entire sordid mess started when a young stripper spotted a lonely but filthy rich old man in the audience of a strip club and married him only to be left out of his will.
She went to court against the old man’s son, who prevailed but in so doing, apparently had a falling out with one of his sons who now is suing over the appointing of his widowed mother to govern the family trust, rich beyond the average person’s imagination.
And now the lawyers are raking in more money on this one case than most of us will see in a lifetime.
Sometimes it just doesn’t seem to be worth the heartache that goes with having more money than one needs. It reminds me of a couple of relevant lines in the late Harry Chapin’s song Sequel:
“It’s better sometimes, when we don’t get to touch our dreams.”
Simple enough. And then there are these lines further down in the song:
“…From my journey between heaven and hell,
With half the time thinking of what might have been
And half thinkin’ just as well.”
Louisiana Voice 
Or, as my financial adviser once said, “Money is like manure. The more you have, the more it stinks.”