Judge denies Jamie Spears’ motion to compel Britney’s deposition

Britney Spears will not sit for her father’s so-called “revenge deposition,” a Los Angeles judge ruled on Wednesday.

Judge Brenda Penny stuck to her interim order in an afternoon hearing and spared the “Toxic” singer after Britney’s attorney, Mathew Rosengart, argued that a wire fence nobody by Jamie Spears’ lawyers would leave his client “re-traumatized”.

In her ruling from the bench, the judge said the pop star “probably lacks” knowledge about her father’s impugned conduct that could not be obtained through “less coercive alternative means”.

Jamie has sought to file his superstar daughter over ‘unsubstantiated allegations’ made against him as Britney fights her December 15, 2021 motion for estate costs. In a hearing two weeks ago, Rosengart called the effort a ‘revenge deposition’, arguing that his client has no direct knowledge of her father’s alleged wrongdoing because she was kept in the dark. during his almost 14-year conservatorship which ended last November.

Judge Penny did not immediately rule on pending motions for Rosengart to depose Tri Star executives Robin Greenhill and Lou Taylor.

Greenhill and Taylor fought against subpoenas from Britney’s attorney for nearly a year. According to Rosengart, Taylor was working closely with Jamie in 2008 when Britney’s controversial conservatorship first kicked off. Lawyer says evidence shows Tri Star unjustly enriched herself with money from Britney’s estate, earning more than $18 million in an alleged romance deal, and that Greenhill was part of an effort to control the superstar by monitoring his private communications.

Rosengart focused on Greenhill after being singled out in blockbuster statements made by former Spears security staffer Alex Vlasov in the New York Times documentary Controlling Britney Spears.

According to Vlasov, Greenhill actually came up with Britney’s iCloud account “mirror” plan to keep tabs on her text messages, notes, call logs, browsing history and photographs. He said Jamie Spears and Greenhill were in a group chat with his boss, Edan Yemini, head of security firm Black Box, to track Britney’s personal life.

“Edan would bring me text messages that Britney had, and he would ask me to encrypt those messages and give it to him so he could pass it on to Robin and Jamie,” Vlasov said. “They were also monitoring conversations with his friends, with his mother, with his lawyer Sam Ingham.”

Vlasov claimed that at some point, Yemini “had an audio recording device installed in Britney’s bedroom.”

In a Nov. 4 affidavit accompanying her motion to quash the subpoenas, Greenhill claimed that “no one at Tri Star ever suggested monitoring Ms. Spears’ electronic communications.” She also denied any knowledge of a “hidden electronic monitoring device placed in Ms Spears’ bedroom”. She and Taylor suggested Rosengart’s request for records dating back 14 years was “grossly overbroad” because Tri Star was not involved in Britney’s career or the creation of the conservatorship in early February 2008.

“Tri Star had no role in suggesting the establishment of conservatorship,” Greenhill wrote.

According to Rosengart and his co-lawyer Kyle Freeny, Greenhill’s statements were false. In a July 1 affidavit, Freeny told the court that Black Box produced Word documents containing screenshots of Britney’s text messages and that Yemini shared the texts with Jamie and Greenhill via email in 2016. and 2019.

The attorneys also provided the court with a January 1, 2008 email that Jamie’s attorney, Geraldine Wyle, sent to Taylor to discuss the best time to seek conservatorship.

“Lou, we have encountered a problem with our selection of judges – the only judge who will be able to hear our case on Friday is [judge] which won’t give Jamie the power to administer mind-altering drugs to B. The first time she leaves the bench is Wednesday. This is the first safe day to be in court on this matter,” Wyle wrote in the email a month before Britney was granted conservatorship. “If we go there sooner, all that work might just be for next to nothing.”

In a subsequent email to Jamie Spears on January 17, 2008, Taylor wrote that she had already told others about Andrew Wallet, the man who eventually became Jamie’s co-curator. “He and tri star will serve as co-curator with you,” Taylor wrote, meaning his company would join Wallet as another co-curator. It never happened.

“Tri Star’s own internal emails – obtained from a third party – demonstrate that Tri Star’s Lou Taylor played a significant role in Ms. Spears’ affairs before and at the start of the conservatorship,” Rosengart told the court in a July 1 file. .

Lawyers for Tri Star and Greenhill countered that Taylor’s emails as well as alleged Black Box documents were unauthenticated and constituted hearsay.