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Business News Legal Management & Funding
Jackson estate sues king of pop’s former manager
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 20 February 2012
Well, it’s like I’m always saying, you can’t have too many Michael Jackson lawsuits, so thank God the late king of pop’s estate has initiated another one.
The estate is suing Thome R Thome, the business advisor who was Jackson’s quasi-manager in the last eighteen months of his life. Thome reckons he is owed fees from work he did for the pop star prior to his untimely demise in June 2009, and that he might be due a cut of money generated by the estate since the singer’s death too. He last surfaced in 2010 demanding access to confidential contracts entered into by the estate, so he could work out whether he was due any commissions.
The estate seemingly concedes that Jackson did enter into various agreements with Thome in the last year of his life, in relation to the advisor’s role in refinancing the then under threat Neverland ranch and negotiating the deal for the ill-fated ‘This Is It’ residency in London. But, the estate’s executors argue, those contracts were “self-serving and unconscionable”.
The estate’s lawsuit wants those agreements declared void, Thome’s claims to a share of estate revenues dismissed, and the return of various items belonging to the singer which the estate claims the former advisor is hanging on to.
Thome is yet to respond to the estate’s claims, though it is thought he is already busying preparing his own lawsuit after over a year of negotiations with Jackson’s executors failed to reach a conclusion, and the estate’s own litigation is something of a pre-emptive strike.
