LOS ANGELES (AP) — 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.
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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 10-year-old children who are entirely ill-equipped to protect themselves from their mentor, Michael Jackson.”
Boyer added that the boys “were left alone in this lion’s den by the defendant’s employees. An affirmative duty to protect and to warn is correct.”
Jackson died in 2009. Robson filed suit in 2013, and Safechuck sued the...
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