Howard K. Stern, Executor of the Estate of Vicki LYNN Marshall, Petitioner, v. Elaine T. Marshall, Executrix of the Estate of E. Pierce Marshall (564 U.S. 462)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 23, 2011 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 564 U.S. 462 · 131 S. Ct. 2594
- Decided
- June 23, 2011
- Term
- October Term 2010
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Roberts
- Issue area
- Private Action
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Unspecifiable
- Constitutional ruling
- Federal law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court. This “suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that... no two ... lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause: innumerable young people have married into it;” and, sadly, the original parties “have died out of it.” A “long procession of [judges] has come in and gone out” during that time, and still the suit “drags its weary length before the Court.” Those words were not written about this case, see C. Dickens, Bleak House, in 1 Works of Charles Dickens 4-5 (1891), but they could have been. This is the second time we have had occasion to weigh in on this long-running dispute between Vickie Lynn Marshall and E. Pierce Marshall over the fortune of J. Howard Marshall II, a man believed to have been one of the richest people in Texas. The Marshalls’ litigation has worked its way through state and federal courts in Louisiana, Texas, and California, and two of those courts— a Texas state probate court and the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California — have reached contrary decisions on its merits. The Court of Appeals below held that the Texas state decision controlled, after concluding that the Bankruptcy Court lacked the authority to enter final judgment on a counterclaim that Vickie…
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