A two-hour video of buxom stripper-turned-heiress Anna Nicole Smith undergoing breast augmentation surgery has been blocked from distribution by a California judge.The estate of the late tabloid celebrity, who died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in February aged 39, won a court order barring a plastic surgeon in Texas from selling or circulating videos of procedures he performed on Smith in 1994.
Court documents from the case, including the judge's ruling made on Friday, were posted by the website CelebTV.com. Smith's death, and the legal haggling over custody of her baby daughter, sparked a media frenzy in the United States.
A lawsuit filed by her estate's executor, Howard K Stern, accused the Houston physician, Dr Gerald Wayne Johnson, of taping the surgery without Smith's consent and sending copies to a Los Angeles-based memorabilia dealer, Thomas Riccio.
The suit says Johnson's wife and Riccio agreed to share in proceeds generated from a planned release of the footage to various media outlets.
The exact nature of the surgery was not specified in the lawsuit. But a June 2007 letter signed by Johnson and attached as an exhibit said he performed "breast augmentation reconstructive surgery" on Smith in October 1994, the year she married billionaire oil tycoon J Howard Marshall.
The letter also says his office "routinely records all such procedures with the knowledge of the patient" and that he retains "all rights to this video which is our policy to keep confidential during the patient's lifetime".
If the patient dies, Johnson wrote, "it is then up to my sole discretion as to how and when I will disseminate or make public any or all of the images within the video we have produced."
Johnson's lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
Last month, Stern won a separate court order barring Riccio from distributing the surgery video, and Riccio has complied, Stern's lawyer, Vivian Thoreen, told Reuters.
She said the Johnsons were believed to have retained copies of all the footage and Friday's court order requires them to turn over all the material to Stern.
"We believe it's an estate asset," Thoreen said.