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William Shatner hit with $170-million paternity lawsuit

William Shatner has been hit with a $170-million paternity lawsuit.

William Shatner has been hit with a $170-million paternity lawsuit.

(Josh Edelson / AFP/Getty Images)
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William Shatner has been named in a $170-million paternity lawsuit brought by a Florida man who claims the “Star Trek” alum is his father.

Peter Sloan, 59, a radio DJ who also goes by Peter Shatner, claims that the actor has been denying his parentage for years and is seeking $50 million for pain and suffering, $90 million in punitive damages and $30 million in compensatory damages, according to the lawsuit, which was obtained and posted online by Page Six.

Sloan claims that Shatner and Sloan’s biological mom, the late Canadian actress Kathy McNeil, had an affair when they were both working in Toronto. She is said to have given Sloan up for adoption when he was five days old.

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The suit, filed in Tampa, Fla., claims that Shatner, 85, admitted he was Sloan’s father when Sloan paid the actor a visit in 1984 on the set of “T.J. Hooker” in Burbank. Later, Sloan claims the actor recanted the admission.

The lawsuit says that Sloan called him but Shatner denied his paternity and hung up on him. Sloan said that Shatner’s reps also told him that the TV star refused to take a DNA test and said that he should keep the story quiet because it “could be horrendous” for Shatner and his career.

In 2009, Sloan registered the web domain www.petershatner.com to build his brand and shop his book, “The Search,” about finding his biological parents. That same year, he said he also met Shatner at a public meet-and-greet.

The radio DJ requested another paternity test in 2011 but Shatner again denied that he was his father and the actor’s lawyers shut down his request, saying that Shatner is “an incredibly busy, 80-year-old man, and is not interested in spending time discussing this issue with you.”

Sloan also accuses Shatner of hurting his business opportunities by having Twitter shut down his Peter Shatner account because it violated the site’s impersonation policy. Sloan’s IMDBPro account was also shut down, he said, and so was a page about a project titled “T.C. Therapeutic Community” that he had been working on for six months. The site also removed his biography.

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In May 2015, a Tampa Tribune article about Sloan quoted Shatner’s publicist, Cherry Hepburn, as saying, “Mr. Shatner has three lovely daughters but NO son. This person has fraudulently portrayed himself as Mr. Shatner’s son for years.”

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Hepburn, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Additionally, the lawsuit also cites a radio interview with the actor in which Shatner denies that Sloan is his son and says that Sloan is “apparently a lovely man who’s in need of a father.”

Follow me on Twitter @NardineSaad.

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