Ryan O'Neal, son trade charges over fight

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Attorneys for actor

Ryan O'Neal and his son Griffin held dueling press conferences on Wednesday during which each blamed the other's client for a fight that ended in the "Love Story" star's arrest last week.

Griffin O'Neal's pregnant girlfriend, Joanna Berry, 25, attended his press conference sporting a bruised and bandaged left eye that was damaged in the scuffle at the family's home in Malibu.

Ryan O'Neal, 65, was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and negligent discharge of a firearm. He accuses his 42-year-old son of causing Berry's injuries, saying Griffin swung a fireplace poker at him and struck his girlfriend by accident.

The elder O'Neal, nominated for an Oscar for his work in 1970's "Love Story," told the Los Angeles Times that he fired a gun into a stair banister to protect himself.

"It is important to note that we vigorously reject any assertion that the injuries suffered by Joanna and Griffin were a result of Ryan O'Neal's acting in self-defense," Griffin O'Neal's attorney, Gloria Allred, told reporters at a press conference.

Allred said Berry, who received eight stitches over her eye, suffered a corneal abrasion, blunt head trauma, a sinus/orbital wall fracture and lacerations to her face. She is due to give birth at the end of next month.

She did not elaborate on Griffin O'Neal's injuries.

A lawyer for Ryan O'Neal repeated the actor's charge that Berry was hurt when Griffin O'Neal swung the poker at his father and missed.

"Ryan was beaten in his own home by his own son with his own fireplace poker," attorney Mark Werksman told reporters.

Griffin O'Neal is the son of O'Neal and his first wife, Joanna Moore, and is the brother of actress

Tatum O'Neal.

He worked as an actor in the 1980s and '90s but never attained the star status of his father, who also starred in such films as "Paper Moon" and has lately worked in television.

Reuters/Nielsen