Steve Bing Sues MGM Mogul

ByABC News
May 20, 2002, 10:23 AM

May 20 -- Despite what your dentist may tell you, flossing can be bad for your health. Just ask millionaire movie producer Steve Bing.

Using the DNA found on Bing's discarded dental floss as evidence, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, the 84-year-old owner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is trying to prove that the biological father of his ex-wife's child is not him, but Bing.

But like most good Hollywood mysteries, the plot line for this story has taken an unusual twist. Bing has filed a $1 billion-plus lawsuit against Kerkorian for invasion of privacy and trespassing. He claims the MGM mogul sent a private investigator to rummage through his trash and steal the dental floss.

DNA on a String

In the lawsuit, Bing, whose credits include producing the movie Get Carter, claims 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."

Kerkorian is being sued by his ex, 37-year-old Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, for $320,000 a month to support her 4-year-old daughter Kira. He's currently paying her $50,000 a month. Bonder Kerkorian is also demanding use of his private Boeing 737 up to five times a year.

Kerkorian attorney Terry Christensen says DNA tests on the floss turned up a 99.993 percent certainty that Bing was Kira's biological father, according to The Associated Press.

What's more, Christensen defended his floss-procuring approach.

"Did we use a little self-help [in obtaining the sample]? Sure. But it was discarded and it belonged to waste management at that point," Christensen said, according to the AP.

Although they had a relationship for 10 years, Kerkorian and Bonder Kerkorian were only married for one month in 1999. Additionally, his lawyers claimed in court that Kerkorian was sterile.

But sterility doesn't seem to be an issue for Bing, at least according to other allegations made against him. In a separate case, Bing is taking legal action to disprove claims by British actress Elizabeth Hurley, who says he is the biological father of her baby son, Damian Charles.