Houston lawyer Rusty Hardin’s last encounter with former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith was at a party in Kentucky on the eve of the 2003 Kentucky Derby.
As Hardin tells it, he didn’t have much of a chance that evening to chat with Smith, a former courtroom foe also known as Vickie Lynn Marshall, because she shrieked when she saw him and scurried away. That unusual reaction to the mere sight of Hardin presumably stems from his rigorous cross-examination of Smith during a 2001 probate court trial in Houston in which Smith and the sons of her wealthy, elderly husband squared off over his estate. At one point during the trial, Smith responded to a question from Hardin with the retort, “Screw you, Rusty.”
