Flop comedy’s investors sue the socialite and hotel heiress for not fulfilling her promotional duties, but she insists she plugged it to the best of her abilities

Paris Hilton has insisted in court that she did everything she could to promote flop comedy Pledge This! amid allegations from an investor that she turned her back on the 2006 film.

The hotel heiress and socialite is being sued for $8.3m (£5.1m) in damages by receivers for the now defunct entertainment firm that was the major investor in the film, which made just $2.9m (£1.8m). The lawsuit claims she violated her contract by rejecting or ignoring requests by producers to appear on talkshows and undertake radio and magazine interviews for the film.

The film-makers were particularly galled by Hilton’s alleged refusal to promote the DVD release of the movie, which centres on goings-on at a sorority house at the fictional South Beach University.

On the witness stand at the federal court in Miami on Friday, Hilton, 28, acknowledged Pledge This!’s failure at the box office but said she had promoted it to the best of her abilities.

“If I have my name attached to something, I want it to be as big as it can be,” she testified.

Hilton also insisted she was never told her contract required appearances after the October 2006 premiere of Pledge This! and said she spent more than two years promoting it beforehand, including two high-profile trips to the Cannes film festival.

At an earlier hearing, Bryan West, lawyer for defunct firm Worldwide Entertainment Group, told the court: “At no time would she take 10 minutes to do a phone interview.”

Michael Goldberg, lawyer for the receiver, said on Friday that he had pumped the final £600,000 from the company’s account into the completion of the film in the hope that Hilton’s participation would lead to a dividend.

“I said, ‘Just do one little thing and you’ll never hear from me again.’ We had no support whatsoever,” he told the court.