Liza Settles Sex Suit

Liza Minnelli has quietly settled a lawsuit brought by a former chauffeur who accused her of sexual harassment.

The New York Post reports that Minnelli and M'Hammed Soumayah reached a confidential settlement November 13, just four days before the star was scheduled to testify under oath in the case, and that a judge has approved the agreement. Lawyers for both sides declined to discuss details of the settlement, the Post reported Wednesday.

Soumayah filed his suit against Minnelli in 2004, alleging that she had beaten him while in drunken rages and forced him to have sex with her. He said he "eventually succumbed" to her sexual advances after she threatened to fire him from his job, in which he was paid $283,000 a year. He claimed to have "physical evidence" of their sexual relations.

Soumayah, who is married and has two children, had sought $100 million in his suit. Minnelli had filed a countersuit against him for $250,000, saying he had violated a confidentiality agreement. Minnelli's lawyers accused him of working with her former husband David Gest to "destroy" her, according to the Post.

Minnelli went through a similar suit-and-countersuit process with Gest, who accused her of beating him while she was drunk and of trying to infect him with herpes during unprotected sex; she in turn accused him of being "a manipulative clean freak who was trying to siphon off her cash," as the Post put it. Their suits were settled in 2007, the year they divorced.