May 7, 2003  |  VERSAILLES, Ky. (AP) --



William Shatner's ex-wife has sued him for breach of contract over breeding privileges of three American saddlebred stallions.

Marcy Lafferty Shatner claims in her civil lawsuit that her ex-husband broke an agreement in their 1995 divorce settlement that allowed her one breeding privilege per calendar year.

The lawsuit says that until this breeding season, the ''Star Trek" star provided Lafferty the semen of one of the horses, Great Day's Came the Son, in ''fresh cooled format." In March, the lawsuit says, Lafferty learned the breeding privileges from that horse and two other stallions would be in the form of frozen semen.

''Mr. Shatner's offer to provide semen from the three stallions in question in frozen form is unacceptable to Ms. Lafferty," says the lawsuit, filed in late April in Woodford County Circuit Court. ''Potential buyers of the breeding privileges do not want the semen in frozen format."

The 72-year-old actor has owned central Kentucky horse farms since the mid-1980s and has homes in Lexington and Studio City, Calif. As of Tuesday, he hadn't responded to the lawsuit.

This isn't Shatner's first legal entanglement involving horse breeding. In 1990, a former associate sued him over breeding rights to a world champion fine harness horse. Shatner won that case in Fayette County Circuit Court.