A judge has ruled that Britney Spears’ father, Jamie Spears, must testify and provide all the documents requested by the pop star’s team. The judge ordered Spears’ father to be taken down within the next 30 days in Los Angeles.
Judge Brenda Penny ordered Spears’ father to produce all documents related to the electronic surveillance. The move is in the singer’s favor and shows the court believes there is reason to further investigate the shocking claims that Jamie Spears hired a security firm to keep his daughter under surveillance throughout her conservatorship period, with allegations of monitoring her phone and bugging her bedroom to record her private conversations.
Before the judge’s ruling, Jamie Spears’ attorney, Alex Weingarten, asked the judge to give his team access to documents from the singer’s team to help prepare his client’s testimony. The hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court was heated by heated debates between Weingarten and the star’s attorney, Matthew Rosengart.
“It’s a postponement. It’s not an ambush,” Weingarten argued in court before Judge Penney denied his request to obtain documents before his client’s testimony.
Wednesday’s hearing marked a major victory for the singer, who has been fighting her father in an ongoing legal battle since her conservatorship was terminated last year.
Spears was placed under court-ordered guardianship in 2008 by her father, who acted as her sole guardian for most of her 13 years. After more than a decade of fighting the settlement, Spears’ father was removed from court in September 2021, and the custody was eventually terminated in November 2021. Despite the singer’s newfound freedom, her legal team’s battle remains muddled without permission from from both sides.
After about two hours, the judge called a recess because there was another motion on the table: whether the pop star would have to be removed from her father’s team.
Last month, Jamie Spears filed for documents to impeach his daughter in light of her social media posts; Rosengart criticized the request, calling it “vindictive” and a “fraud.”
Initially, during the hearing, the judge granted a temporary order denying Jamie Spears’ request to depose Britney Spears. But after an argument from Weingarten, who said he would appeal the ruling, Penny indicated he might postpone the matter for a later hearing, but then took a short break from the courtroom.
“You don’t sit a victim down for a statement to be taken down by the victim,” Rosengart countered in the courtroom, telling the judge that sitting down for a statement would be “re-traumatizing” for the singer.
At one point, pleading with the judge to allow his team to remove the pop star, Weingarten said “unfortunately” there are documents under seal and “court orders regarding” electronic surveillance. “Based on what I know,” he said, “I suspect Ms. Spears will be a treasure trove of information.”
Weingarten said that if the judge decides that Britney Spears does not have to sit for testimony while deciding that Jamie Spears does, his client will not have his “fair day in court.” He said he was held to a “different standard” than the other parties in the case based on “unproven allegations.”
“I think it’s fashionable to trash Jamie Spears,” Weingarten told the judge. “But he has rights… In this country, you’re innocent until proven guilty.”
Rosengart stood up and resolutely objected to Weingarten. “You don’t return a victim to the attacker. It’s the wrong thing to do,” Rosengart said. “That would be wrong whether my client was Britney Spears or Jane Doe.”
“The mere testimony itself is harassment,” Rosengart told the judge.
Rosengart has been fighting Jamie Spears and the singer’s former business manager, Tri Star Sports & Entertainment, since he was retained by Spears in the summer of 2021. He accused the company of “obstructing” his attempts to obtain information about his client by refusing to cooperate and avoid procrastination. Spears’ legal team said it had been seeking the elder Spears’ ouster for nine months and claimed he had been avoiding those requests. On Wednesday, during the hearing, Judge Penny ruled in favor of the star, agreeing that Jamie Spears did not appear for his testimony.
Earlier this month, in bombshell court documents, Rosengart alleged that his client’s father and Tri Star colluded to set up the conservatorship and reap the benefits by taking millions of the superstar’s hard-earned money instead of caring for her best interest, which they deny. (Tri Star and its founder, Lou Taylor, were the superstar’s business managers from 2008 to 2020, and the company was employed by Spears’ father at the time he placed her under guardianship.)
Rosengart alleges that Tri Star was directly involved in the conservator’s creation and received at least $18 million throughout. Tri Star’s attorneys denied this, saying, “As all the evidence becomes abundantly clear, the conservatorship was created on the recommendation of legal counsel, not Tri Star, and has been court-approved for over 12 years.”
Spears’ father and Tri Star have been the subject of defamatory accusations, both by the media and by private investigators hired by Rosengart’s firm. While the surveillance allegations have largely focused on Spears’ father and the Black Box, the security team she allegedly hired, Tri Star, has been at the center of extensive allegations of financial mismanagement.
A report in the New York Times claimed that the star was under surveillance by a security team hired by her father and that Tri Star was involved in monitoring the singer’s phone. At the time, an attorney for Tri Star told the Times, “These allegations are not true.” Earlier this month, Weingarten filed an affidavit from Jamie Spears denying any knowledge of wiretapping his grown daughter’s private bedroom or authorizing surveillance of the pop star. “I am aware of Britney’s attorney’s allegation that a listening device or ‘bug’ was placed in her bedroom for surveillance during her conservatorship,” the statement read. “This statement is false.”
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