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Houston's John O'Quinn collapses at Smith hearing

02:11 PM CST on Thursday, February 22, 2007

From KHOU-TV Staff Reports

Click to watch raw video

A lot of drama Thursday during day six of the Anna Nicole Smith hearings.

CBS

Houston attorney John O'Quinn passed out during Smith hearing.

Houston attorney John O’Quinn, Virgie Arthur’s attorney collapsed during the Anna Nicole Smith courthouse hearing Thursday afternoon.

It happened as Denise James a friend of Smith’s was giving testimony on the stand.

There was a thump off camera and the court officers rushed over to Arthur’s table.

Judge Larry Seidlin remained calm and said, “I figure he’s a diabetic and didn’t eat anything. What do you need as a diabetic ‘Texas’? Get him an orange juice.”

O’Quinn was standing as the Judge Seidlin spoke to him.

The judge said he wanted to keep him around a lot longer.

The hearing is to determine the fate of Anna Nicole Smith’s body.

Smith’s ex-boyfriend testified Thursday that he tried to curb the former centerfold’s drug use and the judge referred to her longtime companion, Howard K. Stern, as “maybe an enabler.”

Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin began the sixth day of a hearing with a long diatribe, saying she lacked a strong support system and speculated that her relationships with estranged mother Virgie Arthur and ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead soured because of her overuse of prescription drugs.

“We have Stern. Is he a bad guy or is he a fellow that has some form of a love for her? We don’t know,” Seidlin said. “Whatever relationship he had with her, he would be called maybe an enabler.”

Stern’s attorney, Krista Barth, rose in objection, but Seidlin continued in what promised to be a long day of testimony.

The judge set a self-imposed deadline to rule by Friday, so Smith’s embalmed body won’t decompose too much for a public

viewing. Arthur wants to bring Smith home to her native Texas, and attorney-turned-boyfriend Stern wants a burial in the Bahamas, where her son, Daniel, died of apparent drug-related causes last year.

Birkhead testified that when he visited the Bahamas home Smith and Stern shared last year, he became increasingly concerned about her drug use.

“They kept bringing more and more drugs in the house,” he said, adding that Stern told him that Smith needed the prescriptions to live.

Birkhead said he suggested she enter drug rehabilitation, but that she told him: “I’m not a drug addict and quit calling me one.”

Smith died Feb. 8 in a Florida hotel, but the cause is still unknown.

So far, the testimony has been peppered with details of Smith’s her sexual liaisons and the deals allegedly being pursued to profit from the deaths of the starlet and her son.

On Wednesday Arthur was hammered with questions about any compensation she has or would receive from news organizations for access to interviews or footage after the deaths of her daughter and grandson.

She frequently said no to questions about arrangements with specific media outlets, and sidestepped other questions or claimed she didn’t understand them. Stern and Birkhead denied getting paid.

Arthur said her last conversation with her daughter about burial came more than 10 years ago, when Smith said she wanted to be interred near her idol Marilyn Monroe, whose body is in a Los Angeles crypt. Birkhead testified he had had a similar conversation with her in recent years.

Even Stern has acknowledged the former Playboy model had hoped to be buried near Monroe, though he said she settled on a Bahamian site after her son died and the details of the California plot could not be worked out.

The Florida hearing is just a morsel of the legal battle surrounding Smith. Birkhead and Stern both claim to be the father of Smith’s 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. Stern is listed on her birth certificate.

At issue in a California court is who fathered the girl, who could inherit millions of dollars from Smith’s estate.

Smith married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26 and she had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995. 

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