This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Legal
BB King’s family submit legal papers in ongoing estate dispute
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 11 June 2015
So legal wrangling around BB King’s estate continues to unfold ahead of a court hearing tomorrow, with new legal papers filed on behalf of some of the late blues legend’s children summarising the allegations they are making against his former business manager and personal assistant, LaVerne Toney and Myron Johnson respectively. They also raise the prospect of a second will separate from the one that names Toney as sole executor of the estate.
The legal filing made by Larissa Drohobyczer, representing at least four of King’s children, doesn’t specifically repeat the previous allegation that Toney and Johnson poisoned the musician, but does make other claims about the pair. Toney is accused of moving over $1 million from King’s bank accounts while denying him proper care in his final weeks and changing the locks on his home so that he died without his friends or family. Johnson is accused of taking cash and jewellery.
Toney’s legal rep Brent Bryson had already called the family’s claims “spurious and unjustified allegations”. The duo are yet to specifically respond to Tuesday’s legal filing, though Johnson did tell the Associated Press: “They’ve been making allegations forever, this is just the next step”.
King died last month, seemingly after suffering a number of small strokes linked to his diabetes. An autopsy was carried out prior to King’s funeral last week, with toxicology results expected next month. Though, despite the poisoning claims, police have said that there is no active homicide investigation ongoing.
