WASHINGTON (AFP) – The rollicking tale of Playboy playmate and ex-stripper Anna Nicole Smith snatched top billing in the staid and sober US Supreme Court, after justices said they would hear the outrageous reality star’s multi-million dollar inheritance claim.

The case, due to come up early next year, is the culmination of a fierce legal tussle between Smith and the son of her late billionaire oil magnate husband Howard Marshall, which has daubed US gossip columns in a trail of sleaze and scandal.

Marshall died, aged 90 in 1995, four years after meeting the busty Texas-born bombshell, then a 26-year-old topless dancer working under her real name Vickie Lynn, in Houston’s “Gigi” nightclub.

Smith who has splashed herself across a Playboy centerfold and dubbed her recent uncensored cable show “America’s Guiltiest Pleasure” was awarded an 88.5 million dollar slice of her husband’s 1.6 billion dollar estate in 2002.

Her lawyers argue that California’s Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was wrong last year to overturn the stipend on the grounds that the District court judge who made the huge award had no jurisdiction over the case.

Smith also claims Marshall’s son Pierce has maliciously sought to cut her out of a share of her late husband’s wealth.

Pierce in return claims he is his father’s sole heir, has branded Smith’s demands “extravagant” and always disputed her earlier claim that his father promised her half his fortune.

When Smith won her original 88 million dollar settlement in March 2002, her lawyer Philip Boesch declared “this is a complete victory for my client, and I think it’s a victory for a husband’s love for his wife.”

Judge David Carter ruled in the case, in which Smith was often lambasted by opposing attorneys as a “golddigger”, that Marshall was a “sickly” old man and his bride-to-be was a “vibrant” young woman when they met.

He found that Smith eventually agreed to marriage after being plied with gifts, though was concerned that wedlock could harm her burgeoning modelling career.

“Their lives were intertwined in need, driven by greed and lust. Nevertheless, the court is convinced of his love for her,” Carter wrote in his judgement.