Buda Pest

DRESSED IN BRIGHT YELLOW FAUX snakeskin, Zsa Zsa Gabor took her latest courtroom setback in defiant stride. “Juries never like me!” declared Gabor, 75, who in 1990 served three days in jail for slapping a cop and who last week was told by a Los Angeles superior court jury that she and her husband would have to pay $2 million for defaming ’60s film vixen Elke Sommer, 53. “Did you see her?” asked Zsa Zsa of Sommer’s emotional appearance as a witness. “She was crying and saying she couldn’t sleep for three years. I never knew Elke was such a good actress.”

The crux of the fight: remarks that Gabor made to a German magazine in 1990, and subsequent digs made by her eighth husband, Prince Frederick von Anhalt, 50, to a German newspaper. The magazine quoted Gabor as saying that Sommer was broke and forced to knit sweaters for a living. Pure fabrication, protested Sommer, who testified that she and her second husband, hotelier Wolf Walther, whom she married last September, have a $1.5 million house in Erlangen, Germany, as well as a $3 million home in Holmby Hills, Calif. Sommer maintains Gabor’s comments caused her headaches, nausea and sleepless nights. “I am still suffering,” she told the court tearfully. Gabor denied making the statements, but the jury awarded Sommer $800,000 for Zsa Zsa’s indiscretions and a princely $1.2 million for those of von Anhalt, who had said that Sommer was losing her hair and is older than she claims.

Zsa Zsa says Frederick was only defending her against Elke, who once sniped, “Zsa Zsa has such a fat bottom she can’t even get on a horse by herself.” Said Gabor on the witness stand: “I can’t help if I have a big ass. I have done very well with it anyway.”

Good thing, too. At press time the court was still deciding whether to tack on punitive damages as well. Vowed Zsa Zsa, who plans to appeal: “She’ll never gel a penny.”