Bing sues MGM boss for $1bn over bin search in new paternity case

Steve Bing, the alleged father of Liz Hurley's baby, yesterday filed a lawsuit for a billion dollars against the head of MGM Studios, Kirk Kerkorian, claiming that Mr Kerkorian breached his privacy by hiring a private detective to rummage through his dustbin.

Mr Kerkorian was apparently trying to find something that would yield DNA evidence to prove that his ex-wife's daughter was fathered by Mr Bing. The detectives found a strip of used dental floss.

This bizarre development in one of the modern world's more convoluted sagas came about as a result of Lisa Kerkorian's legal attempts to get her ex-husband to increase the $50,000 (£34,340) a month he already pays for child support to $320,000 a month. She has claimed the child needs $144,000 a month for travel, $102,000 for food and $7,000 to give to charity. Mr Kerkorian is 84, and his lawyers said in court he was sterile. Mrs Kerkorian is 37. Her daughter Kira is four.

Mrs Kerkorian has admitted faking one paternity test by using saliva from one of Mr Kerkorian's grown-up daughters. She said her ex-husband wanted to pretend he was the father to enhance his reputation for virility. The couple were only married for a month, though they had had a relationship for 10 years.

Before she became embroiled in the bitter three-way dispute, Mrs Kerkorian was better known as the tennis player Lisa Bonder. She reached the top 10 in the professional tennis rankings and was generally referred to as "the tall, sexy blonde from Michigan". Last year, Mr Kerkorian was at No 46 in his favoured rankings: the Forbes Magazine list of the world's richest people. His net worth was reckoned at $5.8bn.

Mr Bing's lawsuit, filed in court in California, complains that "one of the richest men in the world... schemed to steal someone's DNA from the garbage and to have that DNA tested without consent in a disgusting effort to publicly smear and disparage his ex-wife". The private detective, Stephen Scholl, is also being sued.

Mr Bing, a Hollywood producer and scriptwriter who is heir to a New York property magnate, is generally described as "a millionaire playboy". He said last month he was willing to give a DNA sample, provided the results were kept confidential. The court document says he "always agreed that if it turned out he was the child's biological father he would act appropriately, just in a private fashion".

He has also taken legal action in London to determine whether he is the father of Ms Hurley's baby, Damian, born six weeks ago. She says he is; he says he might be, but that they were "not in an exclusive relationship"; her friends say Damian looks like him but hope he won't grow up to behave like him.