Los Angeles- Comedian Bill Maher was not laughing when his ex-girlfriend hit him with a $9 million palimony suit, and now he has struck back – calling it an attempt “to extort ridiculous sums of money.”

In papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, and posted yesterday on thesmokinggun.com, Maher said Nancy (Coco) Johnson has sued for big bucks before.

Maher’s legal team submitted news reports of a claim Johnson made in 1997 that a Miami socialite kidnapped and raped her.

The politically incorrect funnyman said in court papers that such lawsuits are “Coco Johnson’s modus operandi.” He insisted her claims that he promised to marry her, have kids with her and then abused her are false.

Johnson’s lawsuit claims that Maher’s promises prompted her to end her career as a model and flight attendant.

“Bill Maher dated Coco Johnson on and off for a period of about 10 months [not 17]. They never lived together. Bill Maher, a confirmed bachelor, and a very public one at that, never promised to marry her or to have children with her,” his lawyers wrote. “He dated her. And when that dating ended, she launched a campaign to embarrass, humiliate and extort ridiculous sums of money from Bill Maher.”

Johnson’s lawyer, Cyrus Nownejad, said Maher’s denials “will be dealt with in court.”

Nownejad said Maher raised the 1997 lawsuit in an effort “to draw an analogy between this previous lawsuit and the claims against him now. There is no correlation between the two.”