Two Los Angeles doctors used multiple fake names to funnel "powerful addictive medications" to Anna Nicole Smith, prosecutors said at the opening of a trial into the Playboy model's sudden death, three years after it occurred.
Prosecutors also alleged that Smith's lawyer and former boyfriend, Howard K Stern, helped keep her over-medicated, calling various doctors for painkillers and other drugs, and sometimes administering them.
Smith, a model and TV actress famous for marrying an 89-year-old billionaire, died in Florida from an accidental prescription drug overdose in February 2007, aged 39.
The two doctors and Stern are not charged with causing Smith's death, but are charged with unlawfully prescribing and giving controlled substances to an addict for three years. Stern and doctors Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor have all pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutor Renee Rose told a jury in the Los Angeles Superior Court that Stern and Kapoor put Smith back on the level of medication she had been taking before embarking in 2006 on a detoxification programme while pregnant.
But lawyers for Stern said Smith was not an addict, but had dealt with chronic pain since 2000, and that she used other names to keep her medical issues concealed from the media.
"Stern cared for and loved her," said Stern's defence lawyer. "He relied in good faith on the medical judgment of doctors."
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