Michael Jackson's Estate Won Court Approval for a 600 Million Dollar Sony Deal Over His Mother's Objection

Caption: Michael Jackson performs at Wiener Stadion in Vienna, Austria, on June 2, 1988. Credit: Zoran Veselinovic, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Katherine Jackson wanted to stop the largest catalog sale in her son’s history. A California appeals court has told her the fight is effectively over.

What You Should Know

A California appeals court issued a final ruling allowing Michael Jackson’s estate to proceed with a roughly $600 million sale of a stake in his music catalog to Sony Music, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The ruling rejected objections from Katherine Jackson, the singer’s mother, who argued the sale violated her son’s wishes.

The deal gives Sony half of Jackson’s publishing and recorded-masters catalog, Billboard reported. Estate executors John Branca and John McClain negotiated the sale while the estate remains in probate more than 15 years after Jackson’s 2009 death.

The Public Image Problem

For Katherine Jackson, the ruling closes a yearslong public campaign centered on what she has described as her son’s wishes. The fight also split Jackson’s children: Prince and Paris did not object to the sale, Rolling Stone reported, and the youngest sibling, Bigi, initially objected before dropping his opposition.

The Receipts

The appeals court ruled that Katherine’s core argument, that the sale violated the terms of Michael’s will, had been forfeited because she never raised it before the probate court that first approved the deal, according to The Hollywood Reporter. On the merits, the court found the will gave executors “broad powers of sale, with no exception for the specific assets at issue.”

The ruling also noted how much Katherine has drawn from the estate: more than $55 million since Jackson’s death, including over $33 million in cash, according to Rolling Stone’s reporting on the estate’s filings.

What Happens Next

Katherine Jackson can still ask the California Supreme Court to review the decision, though The Hollywood Reporter reported her odds of overturning it are considered low. The estate, meanwhile, remains tied up in a separate, long-running dispute with the IRS over hundreds of millions of dollars in alleged unpaid taxes, a fight that continues to hold up final resolution of Jackson’s probate case.

References: The Hollywood Reporter | Billboard | Rolling Stone