Former Golden Girls actress Rue McClanahan is at the center of a legal wrangle - after being sued for $45 million for alleged fraud. Her ex-boyfriend Dirk Summers is suing her in relation to an aborted project in 1997, where McClanahan allegedly backed out of a deal to open a luxury spa in San Diego because he wouldn't marry her. Summers, 71 has also threatened to show explicit love letters at the trial which will commence on 21 February - the actress's 69th birthday. He claims that the couple were "involved in an intimate, romantic relationship for over 16 years" and alleges that they began raising money for the Elan Vital spa in the mid-1990s where after he secured financial backing from a major hotel corporation in June 1997, she demanded that they marry. McClanahan denies the claims and counter-alleges that Summers took $180,000 from her and never paid it back.
- 2/6/2003
- WENN
Former Golden Girls star and animal-rights activist Rue McClanahan is being accused of abandoning her sickly dog. McClanahan's troubled former friend Dirk Summers has filed an animal-neglect lawsuit alleging that McClanahan has turned her back on her 14-year-old German shepherd, Ginger, who needs surgery to remove painful tumors from her side and eye. Summers, who says he has been taking care of Ginger in McClanahan's absence, claims, "I've been asking her to please come and get the dog. Rue said, 'She's old. Just have her killed. Have her put down.' I won't do it. She's a sweet dog. She's going blind, she's deaf and she needs surgery, but she can still enjoy life. Rue doesn't give a care about her." McClanahan vehemently denies Summers' accusations. In his lawsuit filed last month in San Diego superior court, America, Summers claims McClanahan "has a history of indifference to animals under her care." A spokesman for McClanahan, 68, who played feisty Blanche Devereaux on the hit sitcom The Golden Girls, called Summers' allegations "completely untrue" and slammed him as a "criminal." Ironically, McClanahan's former Golden Girls co-star, Betty White, is an outspoken animal rights activist.
- 6/27/2001
- WENN
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