Anna Nicole Smith loses appeal over cash

Former stripper and Playboy playmate Anna Nicole Smith has been dealt a fresh blow in her attempt to be awarded all her dead husband's US$88 million ($124 million) estate.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco declined to reconsider a lower court decision that Smith is not entitled to the estate of her late husband, Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall.

According to the ruling, Marshall's son is the only heir to the fortune.

Marshall died 14 months after he and Smith married in 1993 when she was 26 and he was 89. Since Marshall's death in 1995, Smith and Marshall's son, E. Pierce Marshall, have been battling over the estate.