J. Howard Marshall

James Howard Marshall II (January 24, 1905 – August 4, 1995) was an American billionaire businessman, academic, and government official.

He was involved with and invested in the petroleum industry via academic, government and commercial endeavors.

He owned 16% of Koch Industries.

Marshall was married to model and celebrity Anna Nicole Smith during the last 14 months of his life.

His estate became the subject of protracted litigation, which was reviewed by the Supreme Court in Marshall v. Marshall and Stern v. Marshall.

The court kept the will and testament intact and substantially all of the assets in Marshall's estate wound up in trusts for the benefit of his daughter-in-law, Elaine Tettemer Marshall, and her family.

Born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, and raised a Quaker, J. Howard Marshall II attended George School, a private high school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and then studied liberal arts at Haverford College, both Quaker institutions, graduating in 1926.

While at George School and Haverford, he edited the school newspapers, captained the debate teams, was an All American soccer player, and played competitive tennis under the instruction of professional Bill Tilden.

He graduated magna cum laude from Yale Law School in 1931.

At Yale, he was case editor of the Yale Law Journal and studied with law and economics pioneer Walton Hale Hamilton.

Upon graduation, from 1931 to 1933, he served as an Assistant Dean at Yale Law School and instructed courses in business, finance and procedure, while also publishing articles as a member of the influential legal realism school of thought.

Along with Norman Meyers, he published two articles titled Legal Planning of Petroleum Production in 1931.

These studies offered an alternative to the then-prevailing practices of controlled production in the petroleum industry, which were leading to dramatic boom-bust cycles.

They gained the interest of the government, as many of the supporters of the New Deal were supporters of legal realism.

Marshall married Eleanor Pierce in 1931 and divorced in 1961.

He worked with future Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on an article titled A Factual Study of Bankruptcy Administration and Some Suggestions, published in 1932.

In 1933, Marshall left Yale to become the Assistant Solicitor at the Department of the Interior under Harold L. Ickes.

He authored the Code of Fair Competition for the Petroleum Industry (1933), and the Connally Hot Oil Act of 1935 after the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the National Industrial Recovery Act.

It revived legislation that regulated the flow of oil between states to protect the industry from "contraband oil" in order to stabilize falling prices.

While Ickes originally considered having the government set a price floor for oil, Marshall got Ickes to sign off on a plan to require certificates of clearance for legally produced oil shipped in interstate commerce.

In 1935, he left government service to become the special counsel to Kenneth R. Kingsbury, the president of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron Corporation) in San Francisco.

They had two sons together: J. Howard Marshall III (born February 6, 1936) and E. Pierce Marshall (January 12, 1939 – June 20, 2006).

In 1937, he became a partner at Pillsbury Madison Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), which was the company's outside counsel.

In 1941, he was called back to Washington, D.C. during World War II as Solicitor of the Petroleum Administration for War, helping develop U.S. energy policy during the war, including the Cole Pipeline Act of 1941, and later as a member of the Committee on Reparations and the American Petroleum Institute.

In 1944, after developing a relationship with Paul G. Blazer, he moved to Ashland, Kentucky and became Vice Chairman and President of Ashland Oil and Refining Co. (now Ashland Inc.).

In 1946, he drafted the executive order creating the National Petroleum Council (US).

In 1952, he became Executive Vice President at Signal Oil & Gas under Samuel B. Mosher.

In 1952, Marshall co-founded Great Northern Oil, which, in 1955, built an oil refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota that could refine heavy, sour Canadian crude oil.

In 1959, Fred Koch acquired a 35% interest in Great Northern Oil for $5 million.

Union Oil acquired a majority interest in Great Northern and attempted to take over the company, but Marshall and Koch, who wanted to keep their assets in private hands, blocked the takeover.

In 1961, he became President of Union Texas Petroleum and moved to Houston.

His second marriage, to Bettye Bohannon, lasted from 1961 until her death from Alzheimer's disease in 1991.

In 1967, he became Executive Vice President of Allied Chemical (now Honeywell).

He was also a director of Coastal Corporation.

In 1969, after buying out Union Oil, Charles Koch, who shared a similar business philosophy with Marshall, swapped a stake in Koch Industries for the rest of Marshall's shares in Great Northern Oil.

In 1982, he met "Lady" Diane Walker at a strip club and offered to marry her if his wife Betty, who had Alzheimer's disease, were to die.

Over several years, Marshall gave Walker $15 million worth of jewelry and other gifts.

In 1984, he formed Marshall Petroleum, which was primarily a holding company for his interest in Koch Industries.

Walker died in 1991 at age 51 due to complications from facelift surgery.

The gifts became subject to scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service since gift taxes were not paid; Marshall claimed that the gifts were instead "consulting fees".