Peter Sloan has been claiming for 30 years that Star Trek star William Shatner is his father, and says it’s time for the Hollywood heavyweight to pay up — to the tune of $170 million.
Tampa resident Sloan, 59, recently filed a lawsuit against Shatner to get him to take a DNA test and pay Sloan the huge sum in damages for defamation, libel and slander. He will be representing himself in the case.
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“There has been a pattern of behaviour that makes me look like I am lying, and I won’t stand for that anymore,” Sloan said. “I am tired of being called a fraud by his people and him.”
Shatner publicist Cherry Hepburn said in May “This person has fraudulently portrayed himself as Mr. Shatner’s son for years.”
The lawsuit claims that Shatner’s social media director Paul Camuso posted “malicious, libelous and slanderous statements about the plaintiff on Facebook and Twitter,” including one post that said Sloan was engaged in a “big con game for fame.”
Sloan claims that Shatner, now 85, and his mother, the late Kathy Burt, got together in Toronto while shooting The Canadian Howdy Doody Show. He says he was then adopted, only learning of his alleged parentage when he reconnected with his birth mother in the ’80s.
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According to TMZ, Sloan asserts that Shatner admitted to being his father in 1984 on the set of TJ Hooker. Shatner denies any meeting ever took place, and Sloan has no proof to back it up.
Starting in 2011, Sloan began to use the name Peter Shatner online and for a radio show. Shatner’s team says that “many people over the years have claimed to be his child.”
“I am William Shatner’s son,” said Sloan to the New York Post. “I just wish he would acknowledge me.”