Gest sues Liza for £7m

Liza Minnelli is being sued for nearly £7 million by her estranged husband David Gest amid claims that she beat him so badly in drunken rages that he now has permanent neurological damage.

In a lawsuit that sets the scene for one of the most bitter divorce cases in Hollywood history, the music producer, who married Minnelli less than two years ago, claims she frequently attacked him after bouts of heavy drinking.

According to court papers seen by the Evening Standard, the couple's problems began when they were staying at the Connaught Hotel in London in June last year, barely three months after their glitzy wedding in Manhattan.

Minnelli is said to have told Gest she was taking a car to buy a Chinese takeaway but instead persuaded her driver, named as Catherine Adams, to buy two bottles of vodka for a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous.

The lawsuit claims Minnelli, who has a history of drink and drug problems, drank one bottle straight away in the car and poured the other into a water bottle to disguise it.

Back at the Connaught, Minnelli, 57, began "running erratically from room to room" and then threw a lamp at Gest so hard that it shattered on the floor.

When her husband went to the bedroom to calm her down, the singer "began beating the plaintiff about the face and head with her fists without relenting", the papers allege.

She then told a security guard: "I have no friends. My husband is using me to be a star. I am the star."

At the time the couple were still professing their love for each other in public, with TV appearances on CNN's Larry King show.

But the bitterness that soon overwhelmed the relationship is revealed by Gest, who claims Minnelli's career had been "eclipsed" by the time they married.

He calls Minnelli, the daughter of screen legend Judy Garland, "alcoholic, overweight, unable to be effectively merchandised" and who "could not get insurance to perform concert dates on stage".

By contrast, Gest describes himself without modesty as a "a world-renowned event and concert producer-promoter" whose "Michael Jackson tribute concert extravaganza" was "acclaimed as the highest rated music special in the history of television".

The couple were married in an extravagant ceremony that saw Elizabeth Taylor as a maid of honour and Michael Jackson carrying the bride's train.

Among the dozens of celebrity guests were Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Joan Collins, Mia Farrow, Liam Neeson, Sir Elton John and Lord Lloyd-Webber.

It was Minnelli's fourth marriage, with the singer said to have lost weight and overcome an addiction to painkillers thanks to the influence of Gest, who is seven years her junior.

The couple formally split in July, with rumours that Minnelli had been drinking again confirmed by the lawsuit, filed in a New York court yesterday by celebrity divorce lawyer Raoul Felder.

Among the other incidents, Minnelli is said to have bitten Gest's security director Willie Green in the chest and attempted to strangle his production manager, Steven Benanav.

She had been out drinking in a bar when room service at the Hotel Plaza Athenee in New York refused to send up three glasses of vodka on Gest's orders.

After falling asleep in a drunken stupor, she woke in the middle of the night and fell over in the hotel bathroom giving herself a black eye. Newspapers later reported that she had undergone surgery for a cancerous growth under the eye, a cover story Gest says he concocted.

The lawsuit calls Gest a "victim of domestic violence", saying a particularly violent attack in June left him with a shopping list of ailments, including: "virtually unrelenting pain in his head" along with "vertigo, nausea, hypertension, scalp tenderness, insomnia, mood dysphoria, photosensitivity and phonophobia" - a fear of voices and telephones.

After a CT and an MRI scan, the producer says he now takes 11 prescription medicines a day including "steroidal, anti-inflammatory medications, anti-epileptic medications, antidepressants, and intravenous analgesic infusions".

A spokesman for Minnelli, Liz Rosenberg, said the singer had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.