This image was lost some time after publication.

After submitting a DNA sample to Bahamian authorities (we prefer to maintain our blissful ignorance of how exactly that was achieved), Howard K. Stern made an 11th hour attempt at blocking the results. It was a legal action we're almost certain arose out his desire for privacy at this difficult moment, and not, say, because he bore even the slightest shadow of a doubt that Dannielynn wasn't stamped as 100% his own loinfruit product. Now comes word that the courts have shot down his appeal:

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal rejected a challenge filed by Howard K. Stern, the partner of the Playboy Playmate, who died Feb. 8 in Florida. [...]

Justice Emmanuel E. Osadebay noted that Stern had agreed to DNA testing and waited until a week after the sample was taken to file the challenge. [...]

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hold a hearing in the paternity case but lawyers and officials are prohibited by Bahamian legal rules from discussing the case, even to reveal the nature of the hearing.

Stern will therefore have to sit and sweat until Tuesday's hearing, where the $64,000 baby question (and possibly much more if the Marshall estate ruling goes Dannielynn's way) is finally answered, and the irrefutable, scientific babydaddy evidence hopefully tells us whether that little girl belongs to Smith's longtime creepy counsel, her Babies 'R' Us-shopaholic boyfriend Larry Birkhead, wildcard Prince Zsa Zsa the Fourth, the randy Bahamian Immigration Minister, or any of the of the 27 other virile nominees on your office-pool ballots.