LOS ANGELES –
Workers for corporations owned by Michael Jackson had no legal obligation to protect children from the pop star, a lawyer said in an appeals court on Wednesday.
Jackson estate attorney Jonathan Steinsapir pushed back against an early ruling by California’s 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which said it was keen to revive lawsuits previously thrown out by two men alleging Jackson sexually abused them for years when they were boys.
The court’s reasoning, Steinsapir argued, ” would require low-level employees to confront their supervisor and call them pedophiles.”
Holly Boyer, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who have been involved in the lawsuit, said that workers should have this responsibility.
“We require entity employees to take those steps, because what we’re talking about is child sexual abuse,” Boyer told the three-judge panel at the videoconference hearing. “What we’re talking about here are kids 7 and 10 years old who are completely ill-equipped to protect themselves from their mentor, Michael Jackson.”
Boyer added that the boys “were left alone in this lion den by the defendant’s employees. An affirmative duty to protect and warn is correct.”
Jackson died in 2009. Robson filed a lawsuit in 2013, and Safechuck sued the following year. The two men became best known for telling their stories in the 2019 HBO documentary ” Leaving Neverland.”
A judge who dismissed the lawsuits in 2021 found that mjj Productions Inc. And MJJ Ventures Inc. two corporations of which Jackson was the sole owner and sole shareholder could not be expected to function as Scouts or a church where a child in their care could expect their protection.
Steinsapir said evidence gathered in the cases, which did not reach trial, showed that the parents did not expect Jackson’s employees to act as observers. He said an affidavit from Robson’s mother showed she didn’t even know corporations existed when she first brought her 7-year-old son into the pop star’s presence.
“They weren’t asking Michael Jackson companies for protection from Michael Jackson,” Steinsapir said.
Steinsapir said the allegations in the lawsuit and the court’s interim ruling that the corporations had engaged in negligent hiring were absurd when the person doing the hiring was the alleged offender.
“Any person who may be prone to criminal tendencies has a duty not to employ himself?”Said Steinsapir.
The hearing dealt only with the legal obligations of the companies, not with the truth of the men’s allegations, but Steinsapir often called them unproven and untrue.
Robson, now a 40-year-old choreographer, met Jackson when he was 5. He went on to appear in three Jackson music videos.
His lawsuit alleged that Jackson molested him for a period of seven years.
Safechuck, now 45, said in his lawsuit that he was 9 when he met Jackson while filming a Pepsi commercial. He said Jackson often called him and praised him with gifts before going through a series of sexual abuse incidents.
The Associated Press usually does not name people who say they were victims of sexual abuse. But Robson and Safechuck have come forward and approved the use of their identity.
The men’s lawsuits have already been brought back from a 2017 dismissal, when Young threw them out because they were beyond the statute of limitations. A new law in California that temporarily expanded the scope of sexual abuse cases prompted the appeals court to reinstate them. Jackson’s personal property-the estate he left after his death-was thrown out as a defendant in 2015.
The Jackson estate has vehemently and repeatedly denied that he abused any of the boys, and has pointed out that Robson testified at Jackson’s criminal trial in 2005, where Jackson was acquitted, that he was not abused, and Safechuck said the same to authorities.
The three judges who heard the case on Wednesday did not make an immediate decision.
Judge Johnoglobiley said: “it seems to me that these corporations were in an excellent position to prevent these injuries.”They could have asked for a companion to be present for the children, for example,” he said.
Steinsapir, who stressed that the alleged harassment took place at Jackson’s home, not at workplaces, replied, “Can my law firm tell me who I’m allowed to be in my home with?”
Boyer, the plaintiffs ‘lawyer, responded that” these homes were staffed by Jackson’s employees. They adopted policies and procedures to facilitate Jackson being alone with these children.”
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