July appearance ordered in lawsuit
Thursday, June 02, 2005
By Susan Finch
Staff writer
As Michael Jackson awaits a California jury's verdict on child molestation and other charges, the pop star is facing a command performance this summer in federal court in New Orleans.
Jackson, sued last fall by a Louisiana man who claims the singer held him prisoner and sexually assaulted and battered him for nine days in 1984, has been ordered to appear July 20 before U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon to discuss what lawyer will be defending him in the case.
Records in the case show that five Louisiana lawyers, four from New Orleans and one from Baton Rouge, hired to defend Jackson withdrew April 29 for reasons they described as "sensitive in nature" and that, at their request, Fallon filed under seal.
Fallon's order Tuesday, sent to the singer at his Neverland Ranch in California by certified mail, said Jackson must show up in New Orleans in July on pain of "imposition of appropriate sanctions" unless he engages a new attorney.
Jackson's former New Orleans attorneys, all with the firm of Schonekas, Winsberg, Evans & McGoey, sued him earlier this week in Civil District Court to collect nearly $47,000 they say he owes for their services between Nov. 16 and April 29. Jackson's accuser in the federal case, Joseph Thomas Bartucci Jr., claims he was 18 and in New Orleans with two friends for the 1984 world's fair when a Jackson employee lured him into the singer's white limousine. He says he endured harrowing treatment during a drive to California and was returned to New Orleans nine days later.
Bartucci claims the experience was so traumatic that he repressed memory of it until he saw a 2003 Court TV report about a California investigation of Jackson for alleged child molestation.
Before Jackson's local attorneys dropped out of the case, they asked Fallon to limit pretrial discovery to Bartucci's alleged memory repression as it relates to the timing of his lawsuit.
"If plaintiff . . . is unable to prove that he had a total repression of all memory of the alleged incidents until Nov. 1, 2003, his claims are prescribed and this matter must be dismissed," they said in paperwork filed for Jackson in February.
Closing arguments are scheduled today in Jackson's trial in California on charges of child molestation, conspiracy and serving alcohol to a minor. The jury is expected to get the case Friday.
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