Mischa Barton refuses to pay sobriety bill

Los Angeles: `The OC` star Mischa Barton says she is not responsible for a USD 95,000 bill owed to a team of Nurses, who helped keep her sober in 2009 as her mother hired them.

The 27-year-old actress-turned-handbag designer was ordered to pay Doctors` Choice Nursing (DCN) for services they provided her in 2009 but she claims she is not responsible for the outstanding bill as she didn`t hire the team to look after her, reported TMZ. A default judgement was entered against Barton in 2011 after she failed to show up in court when the company filed a lawsuit to recoup the money owed to them for helping her to stay sober. But Barton`s lawyer argued in court that her mother hired the sobriety nurses and therefore she ran up the bills so the actress isn`t responsible for them. The actress is fighting the default judgement and her lawyer pointed out that the owner of the DCN failed to notify Barton directly about the mounting bill, saying it didn`t make sense if they thought she was responsible for paying it. The owner claimed that she didn`t want to add to Barton`s stress, as it was the nurses` job to keep her sober before an important acting role in 2009, the same year that she was starring in `The Beautiful Life` and was legally held in hospital under psychiatric observation. A judge has yet to rule on who is liable to pay the bill. PTI