A pair of lawsuits accusing Michael Jackson of sexual abuse have been revived by a Los Angeles appeals court following their dismissal in 2021.
The suits come from plaintiffs Wade Robson and James Safechuck, whose allegations against Jackson were the subject of the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland. Two years ago, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge dismissed the cases, arguing that Jackson’s corporations, MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures, had no legal duty to protect the men (then children) from Jackson’s abuse because the corporations could not control the musician’s behavior. Jackson was the sole owner of both corporations.
Now, the 2nd District Court of Appeal has reversed the dismissal, arguing that it would be “perverse” to free the corporations of responsibility for their owner’s behavior. “To treat Jackson’s wholly-owned instruments as different from Jackson himself is to be mesmerized by abstractions,” Associate Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. wrote in a concurring opinion.
Robson and Safechuck first came forward with allegations that Jackson groomed and molested them as children in 2013. Their lawsuits were initially dismissed because the statute of limitations on the cases had expired, but they was brought back after a 2019 law gave victims of childhood abuse a longer window to take legal action. A Los Angeles judge will now reconsider the accusations against the singer.
