Paternity Suits

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. and controversial Chairman Milan Panic have settled a high-profile lawsuit brought by a former employee who alleged Panic demanded sex from her and fathered her child, a company spokesman said Monday. The settlement comes less than three years after Panic and the company settled another case in which a former female employee alleged she was the target of advances by the chief executive of the Costa Mesa-based drug maker.

When he died after his vintage airplane plunged into the Pacific Ocean a year ago, Larry Lee Hillblom, the eccentric founder of the DHL international courier firm, left a will that has embroiled California in a bizarre legal battle with three former bar girls over an estate worth at least $500 million.

A Prague physicist claims he is the son of Albert Einstein and that he was switched at birth and raised by a woman whose infant died the day he was born, according to a report published Saturday. Ludek Zakel, 63, told the New York Times: "I may not be able to prove it, but I know I am his son. I cannot profit from being Einstein's son. I cannot reverse the course of my life or change it in any way. So why would I lie?"

A former ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. employee alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that ICN chairman Milan Panic demanded sex from her during a business trip and fathered her child before forcing her from her job last October. Debra Levy, in a civil suit filed in Orange County Superior Court, seeks unspecified damages from Panic and ICN in connection with alleged sexual discrimination and harassment during nearly a decade with the company.

Blood tests show that John Bobbitt is likely the father of a baby born to a woman suing him for paternity, but Bobbitt might challenge the results, his attorney said in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Beatrice Williams said she dated Bobbitt for three months in 1992, a year before his wife, Lorena, cut off his penis. Bobbitt, whose organ was surgically reattached, denies he is the boy's father, saying he knew Williams but they never dated.

John Wayne Bobbitt, whose wife was found innocent of malicious maiming, faces a blood test in a paternity suit brought by a former girlfriend. Beatrice Williams, 21, filed a suit in October seeking child support from Bobbitt for her son, who is a year old. She claims Bobbitt fathered the child while he was separated from his wife, Lorena, and living in Niagara Falls.

Rhode Island's governor said Thursday he was "proud to be the father" of a Michigan teen-ager and agreed to pay her college costs as part of an out-of-court settlement of a paternity lawsuit. In return Kara Hewes, 17, agreed to drop the lawsuit seeking unspecified support that she filed against Gov. Bruce G. Sundlun on June 9 in Oakland County, Mich., where she lives. Hewes said she plans eventually to use Sundlun's name and hopes for "all the benefits of a normal father-daughter relationship."

Blood tests have determined that actor Robert De Niro is not the biological father of a 10-year-old Sherman Oaks girl whose mother filed a paternity suit against him, the woman's lawyer said Friday. But attorney Marvin Mitchelson said Helena Lisandrello, a 31-year-old nightclub singer, will continue to seek tuition and other payments from De Niro because he had accepted the girl as his daughter and supported her for a long time.

Actor Robert De Niro has been ordered to pay school tuition and $2,500 a month in child support to a Sherman Oaks singer who says De Niro fathered her 10-year-old daughter, an attorney said Wednesday. Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner James Endman ordered De Niro on Tuesday to pay support and the child's tuition of nearly $1,000 monthly at the Lycee Francais school in Los Angeles, said Marvin Mitchelson, attorney for the girl's mother, Helena Lisandrello, 31, a nightclub singer.