Los Angeles News

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― Anna Nicole Smith's ex-boyfriend filed a lawsuit Friday against the celebrity attorney who helped him prove he is the father of Smith's baby daughter.

Larry Birkhead's lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, comes three days after lawyer Debra A. Opri filed papers seeking to force him into arbitration to resolve her $620,000 legal bill.

Birkhead's lawsuit alleges legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, conversion and fraud.

Birkhead maintains he is owed $885,000 paid to him by NBC Universal that Opri allegedly placed in a trust account.

He also claims Opri disparaged Smith in the media and attended her funeral despite Birkhead's objections, and that she leaked confidential information to an MSNBC reporter against his wishes as a payback to the reporter for referring Birkhead to her as a client.

According the lawsuit, Opri initially told Birkhead she was a believer in the rights of fathers and would not charge for her services because the case would benefit her legal career. He later paid her $20,000 that she told him were costs associated with the paternity litigation.

Opri, through her spokesman, James C. Levesque, issued a general statement Friday claiming "Mr. Birkhead continues to release misleading information to the media that skirts the issue of his unpaid legal fees."

In addition to the television deal, Birkhead has received millions of dollars from selling photos of his daughter, making him capable of paying his overdue legal fees, according to the statement.

A hearing on Opri's attempt to compel arbitration is set for July 9, according to the statement.

According to the celebrity Web site TMZ.com, Birkhead made a deal with NBC for $1 million to appear on various shows and received a check for $865,000. Without Birkhead's consent, Opri deposited the money in her client trust account, later giving him $200,000, leaving $665,000 in the trust account.

He fired her when she would not give him the rest of the money, the Web site reported.

She then sent him a bill for $620,000 for legal services including charges for expensive dinners, her publicist and her husband's laundry, TMZ reported.

His lawsuit claims many of the charges were for her "personal aggrandizement," according to the Web site.

The photographer sued Smith last October to force her to allow a paternity test of her daughter, Dannielynn Hope, born last Sept. 7 in the Bahamas, to determine who was the baby's father.

Howard K. Stern, Smith's personal attorney and longtime companion, also claimed to be the father and was presumed under Bahamian law to be so because his name was on the birth certificate.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert A. Schnider ruled in Birkhead's favor on Dec. 21, but the DNA testing of the child was not performed until months later. In the meantime, the 39-year-old Smith died in Hollywood, Fla., on Feb. 8 of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.

Opri and Birkhead went to the Bahamas in February to challenge Stern over who would get custody of Smith's remains, with both men eventually agreeing Smith would be buried in the islands next to her 20-year-old son, Daniel, who died last year of a drug overdose shortly after Dannielynn was born.

On April 10, the results of the paternity testing, taken in the Bahamas, showed Birkhead was the father.

However, Opri suddenly withdrew as Birkhead's attorney on March 16, releasing a statement saying only that she and Birkhead "have terminated our attorney-client relationship immediately."

Although Opri did not give an official explanation of the reason for their parting of the ways, published reports said there had been a strain between the two for some time.

Despite the public statements by both sides, Opri remained Birkhead's lawyer until April 23 because he did not sign the form releasing her, she said.

Birkhead never put his name on the release form, but he did not appear in court to contest Opri's April 23 motion to withdraw, so a Los Angeles Superior Court judge approved it that day.

Dannielynn could inherit a fortune as the only surviving offspring of the widow of billionaire oil magnate J. Howard Marshall, who died in August 1995.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)