Jordan in court with former girlfriend; NHL infighting

	Almost two decades after engaging in an affair, Michael Jordan is still dealing with the ramifications of his decision. AP

Like the man himself in his playing days, Michael Jordan's legal entanglements keep coming back. Litigation over a Jordan romance that began 17 years ago continues in the higher courts of Illinois after a Chicago judge ruled that Jordan's onetime girlfriend was guilty of "extortionate" demands when she asked the former Bulls great to keep an alleged promise to pay her $5 million for her silence.

Karla Knafel, a former nightclub singer who is now 42 and the mother of three, has appealed a recent ruling that barred her from cashing in on a promise that she says Jordan first made to her in 1991, the year he led the Bulls to the first of six championships. (She contends that Jordan repeated the offer in 1998.)

NBA referee Eddie Rush introduced Knafel to Jordan in Indianapolis in 1989 (the same year Jordan married his wife, Juanita), and the romance continued for more than a year in various cities, both sides acknowledge in court documents. After the pair spent two days together in a Ritz Carlton hotel in Phoenix in November 1990, Knafel discovered that she was pregnant. Her physician, according to court documents, concluded that the pregnancy had begun during the days in Phoenix, and she told Jordan the baby was his. Paternity tests later indicated Jordan was not the father, but Knafel now questions the tests. She asserts that the $5 million Jordan allegedly promised her was to pay for her silence, not for paternity support. She kept her end of the bargain for 11 years, she says, until Jordan sued her in October 2002 and demanded a finding that she was extorting him.

The first judge who heard the case -- and Knafel's countersuit -- in 2003 ruled for Jordan, one of a string of triumphs Jordan has enjoyed before Chicago trial judges and juries. After Knafel and her attorney, Michael Hannafan, succeeded in obtaining an Illinois Appellate Court ruling that reversed the decision, allowing Knafel to proceed with her countersuit, they asked for Jordan's deposition, on video, and for documents they thought were in the possession of Jordan and his attorneys. It was the sort of routine request made in the course of any lawsuit, but Jordan resisted and obtained a second ruling in his favor last July from a second Chicago judge. In this ruling, the judge not only halted the discovery process in Knafel's countersuit but also granted Jordan's request for a summary judgment in his favor.