Founder of Motown Records Berry Gordy Jr. is caught up in a nasty legal battle pitting his son against a former business consultant and romantic partner – a lawsuit he says is a “desperate and disgusting attempt” to “shake up” his family.
In a filing Monday in Los Angeles court, Gordy's attorneys asked to be dismissed from the case, arguing that the legendary record executive had been unfairly dragged into the trial to distract attention from “unlawful acts of embezzlement” by his son's accuser of.
“Blackmail – while illegal and highly unethical – is a powerful weapon,” Gordy's lawyer wrote Christopher Frost. “Nowhere is it truer than here.”
Gordy founded Motown in 1959, paving the way for the influential soul music sound that bore the same name. He eventually signed the label with the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and Stevie Wonder and many others, before selling it to MCA in 1988.
His strong response Monday came amid a legal battle between his son, Kennedy Gordy (better known by his stage name Rockwell), and Anita Hawker Thompsonwho previously served as CEO of Kennedy's company, Rockwell Entertainment Enterprises.
Kennedy's company sued Thompson last year, alleging that he suffers from “psychological impairments” and that Thompson had abused her power over him to steal $1.7 million in royalties paid to the company.
Last week, Thompson responded by filing her own scathing countersuit, accusing Kennedy of subjecting her to “physical, sexual and psychological abuse” during a long-term romantic relationship. In it, he also named the elder Gordy as a defendant, claiming he knew about his son's abusive behavior and “tried to cover it up.”
But in Monday's deposition, Gordy's lawyers dismissed Thompson's claims as “a fabricated, unverified narrative” intended to distract from the fact that she had “illegally abused her position of trust with Kennedy.”
“Mrs. Thompson's answer [is] a sly, desperate and disgusting attempt to further shake down the Gordy family and attempt to create a fabricated claim to easily offset the theft and conversion claim he faces — to which he has no legitimate legal or factual defense.” Barry Frost's lawyer writes.
In her lawsuit last week, Thompson's lawyers included pages of disturbing allegations of “intimate partner violence,” including that Kennedy “hit, kicked, punched and raped her” and then used “threats of violence and deportation to secure her her silence”. But in his response Monday, the elder Gordy's lawyers say these “fabricated events” could only reasonably have taken place in the 1980s — well past the statute of limitations for bringing them to court.
“Ms. Thompson and her counsel, knowing full well that the alleged fabrications occurred more than thirty years ago, fail to cite dates when the fabricated errors allegedly occurred,” Gordy's attorneys wrote.
Attorneys for both Thompson and Kennedy did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday.
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