A Los Angeles judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against the late Michael Jackson on Tuesday (December 19), according to the Associated Press.
Choreographer Wade Robson alleged the King of Pop molested him as a child but Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff found that two Jackson-owned corporations — the two remaining defendants in the case — weren’t liable for exposing Robson to Jackson, although Judge Beckloff didn’t rule on the credibility of Robson’s allegations.
Robson met the music legend when he was 5-years-old and initially defended the “Thriller” mastermind at Jackson’s 2005 criminal trial, claiming he’d spent the night at least 20 times at Neverland Ranch and was never molested. Jackson was eventually acquitted.
But in 2013, Robson changed course and filed a lawsuit against the Michael Jackson Estate, saying he was molested over a seven-year period. Two years later, a judge ruled it was too late to sue for any of Jackson’s money, so Robson continued going after MJJ Productions, Inc., and MJJ Ventures, Inc. Judge Beckloff’s Tuesday ruling put an end to that chapter.
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Robson’s attorney, Vince Finaldi, plans to appeal.
“What the judge is saying is that you if own a corporation or a company, you can hire people, use these people to facilitate your sexual abuse, use them to facilitate victims,” Finaldi told The Associated Press by phone. “So long as you’re the sole owner of that corporation, the corporation can’t be held liable.”
Jackson estate attorney Howard Weitzman disagrees. “The court made the correct decision in dismissing Wade Robson’s claim against it,” he said in a statement. “In my opinion Mr. Robson’s allegations, made 20 plus years after they supposedly occurred and years after Mr. Robson testified twice under oath — including in front of a jury — that Michael Jackson had never done anything wrong to him was always about the money rather than a search for the truth.”
