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There really is no pleasant way to spin a story in which one the great American comedy icons is accused in a court filing of chronic infidelity and physical abuse (save your comments—Charlie Sheen is far from an American comedy icon), so we'll leave it to The Smoking Gun to fill you in on the ugly details of the Bill and Jennifer Murray divorce:

Bill Murray is a drug-addicted spousal abuser and serial adulterer who has abandoned his family, according to a scathing divorce filing by his estranged wife.

Jennifer Murray alleges that the Academy Award-nominated actor's "adultery, addiction to marijuana and alcohol, abusive behavior, physical abuse, sexual addictions and frequent abandonment" led her in 2006 to move into a separate South Carolina home with the couple's four children. [...] Murray contends that the comedian physically abused her on several occasions during their marriage (they were wed in 1997) and that the star hit her in the face during a November 2007 confrontation in her home. During that incident, the May 12 complaint alleges, the 57-year-old performer "told her she was 'lucky he didn't kill her.'"

Certainly, Murray is preceded by a reputation for not always being entirely a joy to be around: Even Scarlett Johansson, who includes him among the "five dads" who taught her everything she knows about how to best employ the Electra complex to one's career advantage, admits that he was perhaps the scariest of all her set-daddies. By the same token, the idiosyncratic actor's behavior has grown even more erratic of late, as manifested by a regrettable international incident in which he mowed down several herring stands on the streets of Stockholm, drunkenly piloting a golf cart he briefly mistook for a mighty Viking vessel. We can only hope the ensuing legal proceedings won't grow even uglier, with yet further accusations of inappropriate conduct involving mentor-hungry co-stars and turf-friendly mobility devices.