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Michael Jackson settles suit
The $48 million suit was filed against singer by Prescient Capital in 2005 for breach of contract after the advisory firm helped him secure financing to pay off debts.
June 18 2007: 4:52 PM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Debt-laden pop singer Michael Jackson reached a settlement Monday over a breach of contract claim by New Jersey-based finance house Prescient Capital.

Prescient sued Jackson and his MJ Publishing Trust in July 2005 for $48 million, alleging breach of contract after providing financial advice to Jackson and his various companies.

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Prescient said it helped Jackson secure a commitment for a total of $537.5 million in financing to enable him pay off a $272.5 million debt to Bank of America (down $0.17 to $49.91, Charts, Fortune 500) and possibly to exercise his put option to purchase the 50 percent interest in Sony/ATV Music Publishing he does not currently own. Prescient secured funding from New York-based hedge fund Fortress Investment Group.

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Sony/ATV, the world's fourth-largest music publisher, is jointly owned by MJ Publishing Trust and Sony (down $0.38 to $54.15, Charts). Among its valuable catalog of songs are most of the hit songs of the Beatles and songs penned by Jackson himself.

Michael Jackson has been reported to be struggling with debt, which saw him seek refinancing to avoid losing publishing rights to his valuable catalog of songs, which also includes songs by Bob Dylan and John Mayer.

A spokesman for Jackson told Reuters the settlement means that both the Beatles' and Jackson's songs and others in the library are "safe and sound."

Court documents showed a voluntary dismissal of the breach of contract claim.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed in filings at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Michael Jackson 'grateful' Lawsuit Settled on Verge of NYC Trial

Tuesday, 19 June 2007

Michael Jackson is grateful that his lawyers settled a lawsuit brought by a finance company that claimed was cheated out of $48 million.

The lawsuit by Prescient Acquisition, of Hackensack, New Jersey, was settled Monday just as jury selection was set to begin in Manhattan. The terms of the settlement were not released. Jackson's lawyer L.Londell McMillan said he delivered news of the settlement to the King of Pop, who said," I am very grateful that this is behind me."

"The most important thing is that Michael Jackson's publishing catalogue remains safe and sound," said McMillan, an entertainment law star whose clients have included Prince and Stevie Wonder.

Darien Dash's lawyer said the businessman was owed the money for helping Jackson refinance a $ 272 million bank loan and secure $573 million in financing to buy Sony's half of the Beatle's catalogue. Jackson said he never heard of Dash.

After the settlement, Dash's lawyer, Steven Altman, said: "We brought the lawsuit to collect money for services Mr. Dash provided to Mr. Jackson. We're very pleased with the settlement, although the terms of it we've agreed to keep confidential at Mr. Jackson's request."

McMillan said Jackson was dismissed earlier in the year as a defendant, but the trust to one of his publishing catalogues remained a defendant. A man who worked for Jackson signed an agreement while Jackson was on trial in California who didn't have authority to do so from Jackson.

The lawyer said the settlement "presents a win-win for everybody."
Now, the lawyer said, with the litigation behind Jackson, "the world is awaiting his next creative move."

The lawsuit was one of many recent lawsuits involving Jackson and former business associates. Last year, a jury in California awared a former Jackson aviser $900,000 for work he did on videos intended to rehabilitate the pop star's image. The jury awarded Jackson $200,000 in a cross complaint.

In a deposition taken for the New York case in Paris last summer, Jackson said that the entertainment industry was "full of sharks, charlatans and impostors."

"Because there's a lot of money involved, there's a bunch of schmucks in there," Jackson said. "It's the entertainment world, full of thieves and crooks. That's not new. Everybody knows that."

Source: AP/MJJF

Napísané: **16 Aug 2007, 06:59**

Michael Jackson sued by former lawyers

Wednesday, 15 August 2007

Michael Jackson's former entertainment lawyers filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming the singer owes them more than $113,000.

The law firm Lavely & Singer of Los Angeles says Jackson agreed in arbitration last year to pay them $180,000 in three installments.

Jackson failed to make the final payment of $113,750 before the July 31, 2007, deadline stipulated in the settlement, the firm alleges in a complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

A message left for Jackson's publicist, Raymone Bain, was not immediately returned Tuesday. His lawyer, Christopher Mellott, could not be reached after hours Tuesday.

A judge last month ordered the pop singer to pay more than $256,000 in legal fees to another firm that handled some side issues during his 2005 child molestation trial.

Source: AP / MJJForum

Napísané: **15 Jan 2008, 13:49**

15.1.2008

This case is HIStory.

A lawsuit brought against Michael Jackson by a 22-year-old man whose testimony was characterized as "the ravings of an unbalanced celebrity stalker" by the singer's lawyers, was dismissed Monday after the plaintiff failed to show up for the start of his trial.

"I think the judge realized how crazy the lawsuit was," Jackson attorney Thomas C. Mundell told reporters outside the courtroom after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rold Treu granted his motion to toss the case.

In his original lawsuit filed in January 2006 in Orange County, and then refiled in Los Angeles that March, Daniel Kapon accused Jackson of a litany of sins, including child molestation, assault, battery, false imprisonment, plagiarism and fraud.

Kapon stated in his complaint that, starting in 1987, when he was 2, Jackson started molesting him, and over the next 12 years sexually assaulted him, forced him to take drugs and drink alcohol, subjected him to unnecessary cosmetic surgery, burned, tortured and beat him. To add insult to injury, Jackson then stole song ideas from him between 1987 and 1997, Kapon claimed.

Treu tossed out a handful of allegations in December 2006, including everything related to musical thievery, but let accusations of assault, battery, false imprisonment and a sexual battery cause of action stand.

On Thursday, the judge granted a motion filed by Kapon's most recent attorney, Barry Fischer, to be relieved as counsel. Fischer said that he hadn't heard from Kapon since November and didn't know whether he is "ill, dead or simply refusing to respond."

The lawyer filed a missing persons report with the L.A. Police Department on Jan. 3 and attached it to his request to step down.

According to court documents filed Dec. 17 by Jackson's camp, Kapon killed what was left of his credibility when he was deposed last month.

At the time, he testified that he fathered Jackson's two oldest children, Prince and Paris, by artificial insemination, and that his mother swapped vows with the entertainer multiple times. Elizabeth Taylor, Celine Dion, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé Knowles and Diana Ross were among the guests at their various weddings, Kapon said.

Kapon's mother was in Jackson's "Thriller" video, the plaintiff stated, and the platinum-selling artist later fell "madly in love" with her.

Per Kapon's complaint, it was after Jackson fell for his mom that he molested Kapon on and off for 12 years, both at Jackson's Encino, California, home and at his famed Neverland Ranch.

In his deposition, Kapon said that Jackson had him ejaculate into a jar and later used his semen to impregnate ex-wife Debbie Rowe.

"He was obsessed with geniuses and blood lines and he told me that he wanted to continue my blood line, which he believed to be related to the Rothschilds," Kapon said.

Also according to the Dec. 17 filing, at another point during the deposition, Kapon claimed to have seen Jackson dining with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro at a New York restaurant.

"These are not good-faith deposition answers," Mundell wrote in his filing. "They are the ravings of an unbalanced celebrity stalker."

Jackson was acquitted of unrelated criminal molestation charges in 2005.

Napísané: **18 Jan 2008, 09:19**

On January 14, 2008, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu granted a motion by Michael Jackson's defense to dismiss the bizarre Daniel Kapon lawsuit in its entirety after Kapon failed to show up for the scheduled start of the trial. Of the case dismissal, Jackson's attorney Thomas Mundell told The Daily Breeze: "I think the judge realized how crazy the lawsuit was... These are not good-faith deposition answers, they are the ravings of an unbalanced celebrity stalker."

Daniel Kapon's case against Jackson was, by all accounts, a media-created and fully fabricated case that underwent a series of dramatic and unheard of changes from the initial allegations in 2004 to the final deposition given by Kapon last month. In May 2004, Daniel Kapon first sold his story along with a nearly 30-minute videotape of himself to the tabloid publication, News of the World. At the time, Kapon was being represented by famed pursuer of Michael Jackson, Gloria Allred. Kapon claimed that he suddenly recovered all of these repressed memories of abuse after a 2004 psychiatric session with another woman affiliated with the public criticism of Michael Jackson, Dr. Carole Lieberman. In time, both Gloria Allred and Carole Lieberman silently backed away from the far-fetched claims and subsequently refused to comment on the case or their personal involvement.

Kapon's factually lacking and unprecedentedly zany claims repeatedly changed over the years. First Kapon claimed that he was abused by Michael Jackson for six years, but in an amended complaint he said that the abuse actually lasted twelve years (from the age of two until the age of 14). First he said all of these "sadistic" acts were filmed and directed by another person in the room with multiple camcorders, but Kapon later removed all mentions of the so-called director. Kapon originally said that Michael would drug him and "demonically laugh" and switch personalities while abusing him at both Neverland and the Encino family home.

As the months and years passed, Kapon added even more wild allegations to the lawsuit. In 2006, the complaint filed in Orange County Superior Court added that Kapon was forced to undergo cosmetic surgery procedures as a child by Michael Jackson, and that Jackson burned, tortured, and beaten Kapon and his mother. As if these claims weren't enough, Kapon also added Sony as a defendant and claimed that many of Michael's hit songs from the Bad album (1987) through Blood On the Dance Floor (1995) were written by Kapon himself (starting from when he was just an infant), and that Michael Jackson had plagiarized much of Kapon's work.

While many of these claims were thrown out in late 2006, several of them remained permissible until just yesterday when all allegations were dismissed. On December 11, Kapon added even further allegations during a deposition including: Daniel Kapon's mother had married Jackson several times, Daniel Kapon is the real father of two of Michael Jackson's children, and that Daniel Kapon's mother was in the Thriller music video and aided Michael Jackson with a lot of his musical works.