REVIVAL OF JACKSON SEX ABUSE CASES EYED

Workers for corporations owned by Michael Jackson had no legal obligation to protect children from the pop star, an attorney told an appeals court Wednesday.

Jackson estate lawyer Jonathan Steinsapir pushed back against a tentative decision by California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal, which said it was inclined to revive previously dismissed lawsuits from two men who allege 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, an attorney for plaintiffs Wade Robson and James Safechuck, said workers ought to have that responsibility.

“We do require that employees of the entity take those steps, because what we are talking about is the sexual abuse of children,” Boyer told the three-judge panel in the videoconference hearing. “What we are talking about here is 7- and 10year-old children who are entirely ill-equipped to protect themselves from their mentor, Michael Jackson.”

Jackson died in 2009. Robson filed suit in 2013, and Safechuck sued the following year.

A judge who dismissed the suits in 2021 found that that MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc., two corporations for which Jackson was the sole owner and lone shareholder, could not be expected to function like the Boy Scouts or a church where a child in their care could expect their protection.

Wednesday’s hearing dealt only with the legal obligations of companies, not the truth of the men’s allegations, but Steinsapir frequently called them both unproven and untrue.

The Jackson estate has denied that he abused either of the boys.

The three judges hearing the case Wednesday did not make an immediate ruling.