Ragland

Defendant Corranzo Ragland (appellant or Corranzo) appeals from a judgment denying him attorney’s fees after he successfully defended a paternity suit.

Corranzo and Dorothy Williams (Dorothy), the mother of Roschelle (the minor child on whose behalf the present action has been brought) were married in 1959 and separated in 1963. They had three children: Corranzo, Jr., Jacqueline and Dorothea. Following their divorce, Corranzo married his present wife, Audrey, in 1966. Between 1970 and 1981 (the time of the trial) Corranzo and Dorothy’s children were reared by Corranzo and Audrey. Dorothy also remarried in 1966. Her second husband, Fred Goins, however, died one year later. Roschelle, who was nine years old at the time this action was initiated, had been bom out of wedlock on July 23, 1969. Dorothy testified that she had sexual intercourse once with Corranzo in September 1968 on the last day of her period which, according to the hospital records, was on September 16, 1968. However, she conceded that during the possible conception period (45 days before and 90 days after Sept. 16, 1968), she dated several men including a Bmce, Wooten Johnson, and Robert Williams whom she…