Liza with a Lawsuit?

Liza Minnelli and hubby David Gest may end up as reality-TV stars after all--on Court TV, perhaps.

Nothing's filed, and nobody's explicitly threatening, but the signs are pointing to a legal showdown over the couple's aborted VH1 reality series, Liza and David.

This week, Minnelli and Gest let it be known they've hired an attorney. Michael Sherman, who recently represented the Kennedy clan's Michael Skakel in a notorious murder trial (in which his client was found guilty), told the New York Times he has "been retained to explore every option."

Sherman stopped short of saying "every option" included a big, fat lawsuit. He noted only that he plans to "seek appropriate remedies and take appropriate action."

Minnelli and Gest, meanwhile, have been busy making their case in the media and the National Enquirer, which is only fair, considering VH1 made its case perfectly clear when it announced it was canceling Liza and David before it even debuted.

In late October, the network said Minnelli and Gest denied producers "the kind of access and cooperation we needed to make the show work."

The unofficial comments were harsher. One unnamed production source told the New York Post, "David Gest redefines the term 'control freak.' He was almost insane."

To hear Minnelli and Gest tell it, it was VH1 producers, and one in particular, who were the hard-to-handle ones.

The main target of the couple's ire is Robert Weiss, VH1's chief of East Coast programming and development--and one of two executive producers on Liza and David.

Minnelli and Gest say Weiss insulted Ray Charles, jabbed David in the arm and interrupted Liza mid-performance with a ringing cell phone during an all-star cocktail party at the newlyweds' Manhattan apartment in October.

"His actions made Liza worried and nervous," Gest said in a statement released via their publicist. "He was acting like a child, out of control."

The couple say Weiss was upset that they'd invited so many supposed old fogies (see Ray Charles, Sandra Bernhard, Luther Vandross, etc.) to the bash, which was being filmed for the TV show. The exec was insistent that the two young'uns in the crowd--Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child and newcomer Michelle Branch--be enlisted to perform for the benefit of the cameras.

But the problem, according to Minnelli and Gest, was that neither Rowland nor Branch wanted to sing--Rowland was tuckered out from a recent tour; Branch, a last-minute invite, was minus sheet music. Both said they'd return to Liza and David's penthouse to offer command performances at another time.

According to Gest, that answer wasn't good enough for Weiss. "[He said,] 'Our audience is these two [Rowland and Branch], and if you don't bring them up, your show is canceled,' " Gest told CNN's Larry King on Wednesday. "The next day he called and said, 'I have news for you. Your show is canceled.' "

Gest, the music-industry impresario who wed Minnelli in an intimate circus for 1,500 in March, claims the network has more than 60 hours of footage of him and the famous missus: Liza singing at a soul-food restaurant, David shopping at Tiffany's, Liza going to an AA meeting. (Liza said she drew the line at letting cameras follow her into the support group, which is kinda big on protecting the anonymity of its members.)

Liza and David, VH1's hoped-for answer to MTV's The Osbournes, was to debut in January. Just one episode was completed. There are no plans to air the "lost" show or any of its accompanying "lost" footage.

In a statement on Friday, the network said it "stands by the integrity and professionalism of Robert Weiss." In an apparent reference to the cocktail party from hell, VH1 said "the termination of Liza and David was not based on one incident."

These days, Minnelli and Gest sound as if they wouldn't mind VH1's crews returning to their apartment--that way they could remove the equipment they left there.

"Our house isn't normal," Minnelli said on Larry King Live.

In other Minnelli-Gest doings, the couple said their planned adoption of a three-year-old girl should be finalized by the end of January. It will be the first child for both.

On Larry King Live, Minnelli and Gest were asked about a fellow famous adoptive parent--Michael Jackson. The Gloved One, who served as Gest's best man at he and Liza's wedding, was in the news Wednesday for the baby-dangling scandal in Germany. Minnelli, while saying she didn't know all the facts, intimated footage of the incident might not have told the whole story.

"It's also the angle of the camera," she said. "[But], of course, nobody should do that to a child."