A filthy-rich 85-year-old Connecticut businessman is doggedly battling a child-support suit against the mistress he knocked up 21 years ago while still married to his second wife, court records show.
Former US Surgical Corp. boss Leon Hirsch, who is currently on his third spouse, has been involved in the legal battle with Norfolk artist and frame-shop owner Turi Rostad since 2008, the documents say.
“We are now five years into this struggle, with no end in sight,” said Rostad’s lawyer, Andrew Devlin.
He called it a “war of attrition waged by Mr. Hirsch.”
Rostad filed suit 15 years after she gave birth to her son Alex — and after Hirsch agreed to pay $2,500 per month in child support without admitting paternity.
That deal had netted her $532,000 up to the point the suit was filed.
But Rostad, 56, sued Hirsch in 2008 seeking to confirm his paternity and get more in support after he refused to kick in half of Alex’s $22,000 annual private-school tuition, her lawyer said.
Hirsch then cut off support and denied he was Alex’s dad.
The ex-CEO has kept up the legal battle even though a court-ordered 2009 paternity test determined he fathered Alex — whom he had never met after encouraging Rostad to abort him, the court papers show.
He’s fighting her efforts to be paid $215,000 in back support, and disputing covering some of her mounting legal fees, the records say.
“I think attempting to bleed his son and his [son’s] mother is the last thing he should be doing,” Devlin said.
“Why spend five years and what will be for him, ultimately, millions of dollars in legal fees?”
Hirsch argued in 2009 that he should pay Rostad only the minimum legal support of $473 per week — even as he revealed he was worth $53 million, and had weekly expenses of $121,598, court records show.
He was instead ordered to pay around $6,235 per month, the records show.
Hirsch’s lawyer, Hugh Keefe, who wryly noted that his client “is the oldest paternity defendant in the history of the state of Connecticut,” pointed out the irascible ex-CEO “voluntarily supported, very generously, the child until he reached his majority” age of 18.
Hirsch was never married to Rostad.
In the 1980s, he was the bombing target of an animal-rights activist because of his company’s practice of conducting sales demonstrations using live dogs, which were killed after being operated on in front of prospective buyers.