HBO's Leaving Neverland made shocking allegations of child sexual abuse against Michael Jackson, and now the late pop star's estate is trying to take legal action against the documentary film. Read on for details.
On Thursday night, two months after Leaving Neverland premiered on HBO and chronicled alleged sex abuse by Michael Jackson, the pay-TV network filed a scorching court brief that lampooned the idea that a single sentence in a 26-year-old contract — "expired and entirely unrelated" — provides any reason to trample on its First Amendment activity.
It's axiomatic that the dead have diminished reputation rights and can't sue for defamation, and while the administrators of the Michael Jackson Estate surely know that, they've cleverly dug out a 1992 deal that provided HBO the rights to once air a televised concert after the release of Jackson's album Dangerous.
That contract has secrecy and non-disparagement provisions and so it is being used as a weapon over HBO's broadcast of Leaving Neverland. On Feb. 21, the Michael Jackson Estate sued HBO, aiming to compel arbitration on the legal claim that the network has breached contract.
Now, HBO's legal team of Daniel Petrocelli and Theodore Boutrous Jr. — a litigation lineup evoking Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris for the '61 Yankees — have taken a swing at the arbitration demand, characterizing it as a "poorly disguised and legally barred posthumous defamation claim" deriving from ulterior motives.
