Michael Jackson’s manufacturing firm is preventing to maintain sealed courtroom data out of the palms of two of his accusers forward of a forthcoming jury trial.
MJJ Productions filed a movement Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court docket to quash 4 subpoenas issued by Jackson’s alleged sex-abuse victims, Wade Robson, 41, and James Safechuck, 46. The subpoenas, directed on the county sheriff’s workplaces and the district attorneys of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties, are for sealed police data associated to Jackson’s 2005 pedophilia fees.
The manufacturing firm believes Robson and Safechuck’s precise goal is a sequence of nude pictures of Jackson included within the data.
The nude pictures had been taken by police in 1993 amid accusations from a 13-year-old boy that he was sexually abused by Jackson, which culminated in an estimated $20-million settlement.
They’re additionally protected by a court-entered protecting order, MJJ Productions mentioned within the Wednesday submitting.
“Past the invasion of privateness points, the out there data point out the images Plaintiffs now search are additionally topic to a strict protecting order agreed to by Michael Jackson and Santa Barbara legislation enforcement and entered by the Santa Barbara Superior Court docket,” mentioned the submitting, in keeping with the Mail On-line.
MJJ Productions went on to say that the images had been “not taken willingly” and had been “the results of a court-ordered search based mostly on a false assertion in what turned a discredited legal investigation.”
“To permit Plaintiffs to take advantage of that sequence of circumstances to their profit by acquiring these pictures now provides a second defilement to the primary,” the corporate concluded within the submitting, the Mail On-line reported.
The movement comes lower than a yr after a California appeals courtroom revived lawsuits from Robson and Safechuck that had been thrown out and later revisited twice since they had been first filed in 2013 (Robson) and 2014 (Safechuck).
The second dismissal got here in 2021 from the L.A. County Superior Court docket, which dominated that the firms MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc. — of which Jackson was in sole management — had no authorized obligation to stop sexual abuse of kids by the singer.
In its August 2023 resolution, the state appeals courtroom reversed the choice, approving Robson and Safechuck collectively to take their abuse claims to a trial — through which they might want to show not solely that Jackson abused them, however that manufacturing firm employees had been complicit.
Jonathan Steinsapir, legal professional for the Jackson property, mentioned his shopper was “upset” with the appellate courtroom’s resolution.
“Two distinguished trial judges repeatedly dismissed these circumstances on quite a few events over the past decade as a result of the legislation required it,” Steinsapir instructed the Related Press. “We stay absolutely assured that Michael is harmless of those allegations, that are opposite to all credible proof and impartial corroboration, and which had been solely first made years after Michael’s demise by males motivated solely by cash.”
Howard Weitzman, the late legal professional who beforehand represented Jackson, equally described Robson and Safechuck as “serial perjurers, whose sole agenda has been to extract cash from Jackson’s rightful heirs and chosen beneficiaries,” after the discharge of the 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland.
Within the documentary, the repeat plaintiffs recounted the abuse they endured as boys at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.
Jackson’s property sued HBO over the documentary, alleging that the cable channel violated non-disparagement agreements it had made with the singer previous to his demise in 2009.
“Regardless of the determined lengths taken to undermine the movie, our plans stay unchanged,” HBO mentioned in a press release at the time of the lawsuit. “This can enable everybody the chance to evaluate the movie and the claims in it for themselves.”
Robson and Safechuck’s trial date has been scheduled for April 2025, the identical month that the forthcoming Michael Jackson biopic is slated for launch.
The two hope their trial comes first, however apparently suspect MJJ Productions is gunning for the other.
“They need the Michael Jackson biopic to return out earlier than the trial. That’s what I feel,” their lawyer John Carpenter instructed Rolling Stone in February. “These companies that facilitated the abuse within the first place, they’re rewriting the historical past.”
