Michael Jackson, abuse lawsuits resume: who ends up in the crosshairs

The trial triggered by allegations of sexual abuse against Michael Jackson reopens. And employees of their record companies end up at the booth. A three-judge panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeals ruled that the lawsuits against Wade Robson and James Safechuck, Michael Jackson’s two longtime accusers, should not have been filed in a lower court and that the two companies owned of Jackson, named as defendants in the cases, were responsible for protecting them. A new California law that temporarily expanded the scope of sexual abuse cases allowed the appellate court to reinstate them. It is the second time that the actions – filed by Robson in 2013 and by Safechuck in the following year – remain in progress after the filing. The two men became famous for telling their stories in the 2019 HBO documentary, “Leaving Neverland.” After being dismissed by a judge in 2021, claiming that MJJ Productions Inc.

The superior court justices disagreed, writing that “a company that facilitates the sexual abuse of children by one of its employees is not exempt from the duty to protect them”, adding that “it would be perverse to find no obligation based on the corporate defendant having only a shareholder. And so we reversed the judgments given by the companies.” Jonathan Steinsapir, Jackson’s lawyer, did not fail to express his “disappointment” at the reopening of the cases.

“Two prominent judges have repeatedly dismissed these cases on multiple occasions over the past decade because the law required it,” Steinsapir said in an email to the Associated Press. “We remain fully confident that Michael is innocent of these allegations, which are contrary to all credible evidence and independent corroboration, and which were made just years after Michael’s death by men motivated only by money.”

Vince Finaldi, of the Robson and Safechuck attorney group, said in an email that he was “pleased but not surprised” that the court overturned the “previous judge’s erroneous decisions in these cases, which were against the law. from California”. dangerous precedent throughout the state and country. We look forward to a judgment on the merits.” In July, Steinsapir argued for the defense that it made no sense for employees to be legally required to stop their bosses’ behavior. “That would require lower-level employees to confront their supervisor and call him out. of a pedophile,” said Steinsapir.

One panelist, Associate Judge John Shepard Wiley Jr., wrote that “To treat Jackson’s instruments as different from Jackson himself is to be mesmerized by abstractions”. However, the judges themselves did not rule on the veracity of the allegations, which will be the subject of an upcoming jury trial in Los Angeles. “We believe that the truth will once again prevail with Michael’s allegation,” Steinsapir said on Friday.

Robson, now a 40-year-old choreographer, met Jackson when he was 5 years old. He went on to appear in three of Jack’s music videos. His lawsuit alleged that Jackson molested him over a seven-year period. Safechuck, now 45, said he was 9 when he met Jackson while filming a Pepsi commercial. She claimed that Jackson called him frequently, showered him with gifts before escalating to sexually assaulting him.