Attorneys for Gordy requested that the renowned record executive be removed from the case in a petition made on Monday in a Los Angeles court. They said that the accuser of his son had done “wanton acts of embezzlement” and that Gordy had been unjustly drawn into the legal dispute.
“Extortion is a powerful weapon, despite being illegal and unethical,” wrote Christopher Frost and John D. Maatta, Gordy’s attorneys. “This is the one place where it is truest.”
In 1959, Gordy established Motown, which helped to create the iconic soul music sound that bore his name. Before selling the label to MCA in 1988, he ultimately signed the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and many more artists.
On Monday, he responded sharply to a court fight that was raging between his son Kennedy Gordy, better known by his stage name Rockwell, and Anita Hawker Thompson, the former CEO of Kennedy’s business, Rockwell Entertainment Enterprises.
Last year, Thompson was sued by Kennedy’s firm, which claimed that Thompson had “psychological impairments” and had exploited her influence over him to embezzle $1.7 million in royalties that should have gone to the company.
In response, Thompson filed her own vicious countersuit last week, alleging that throughout the course of a love connection spanning years, Kennedy had mistreated her “physically, sexually, and psychologically.” She also included the older Gordy as a defendant, alleging he “tried to cover it up” after learning of his son’s aggressive behavior.
However, Gordy’s legal team attacked Thompson’s claims in the petition on Monday, calling them “a falsified, unverified narrative” meant to divert attention from the reality that she had “illegally abused her position of trust over Kennedy.”
Berry’s attorneys write, “Ms. Thompson’s response [is] a craven, desperate, and disgusting attempt to further shake-down the Gordy family and to attempt to manufacture a fabricated claim to conveniently offset the claim for theft and conversion that she is facing — to which she has no legitimate legal or factual defense.”
Thompson filed a complaint last week, and her lawyers included other unsettling claims of “intimate partner violence,” such as that Kennedy “beat, kicked, punched, and raped” her before using “threats of violence and deportation to secure her silence.” The older Gordy’s lawyers, however, responded on Monday, stating that those “fabricated events” could only have possibly occurred in the 1980s, which is long beyond the statute of limitations for taking them to court.
Gordy’s attorneys write, “Ms. Thompson and her counsel do not mention any dates when the fabricated wrongs are alleged to have taken place, despite the fact that they are well aware that the fabrications complained of occurred over thirty years ago.”