So Anna Nicole Smith has finally left the building. As Erica Beras reports in the Miami Herald, she was whisked away in a black hearse -- "escorted by police and trailed by a small fleet of news helicopsters" -- to Miami International Airport where she'll be flown to Nassau for burial.
Of course she'd still be in a body bag in a refrigerator at the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office had Virgie "Mommie Dearest" Arthur not lost in court. Thankfully the Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled quickly that Arthur was full of it and that the trial court had it right. The guts of the order:
"Herein, the trial court found that 'Anna Nicole Smith's last ascertainable wish with respect to the disposition of her remains was that she be buried in the Bahamas next to her son Daniel Wayne Smith.' This finding is not essentially disputed."
Yes, but what about that wacky Judge Larry Seidlin. Didn't we
all have a bad feeling that his antics might have wrecked the case in some way to give Arthur a window? Well the appellate court, in its wisdom, handled that horrific possibility with a deft sentence or two.
Writ the court: "The 'tipsy coachman' doctrine, allows an appellate court to affirm a trial court that 'reaches the right result, but for the wrong reasons' so long as 'there is any basis which would support the judgment in the record.'"
Oh that's rich. I'm surprised that no other media picked up on this aspect of the ruling, since Seidlin, the former (perfectly sober, as far as we know) NYC taxi driver, is the ultimate "tipsy coachman." You see, sometimes, boys and girls, the law can be fun.
(Oh, and I need to post this story by Michael Laforgia in the Palm Beach Post this morning. Police caught a 62-year-old bridge tender in Delray Beach videotaping close-ups of women's busts and asses as they cross the Atlantic Avenue bridge. Hey, it's legal.)
