Superior Court Judge Ronald Sohigian Friday tossed out a civil suit filed against Miley Cyrus that accused the teen singer of delivering a racial insult.   Last February a photo appeared on the internet of Cyrus slanting her eyes in apparent parody of Asians.   The image showed Cyrus and several Caucasian friends Caucasians surrounding a young Asian man while either narrowing or -- like Cyrus -- stretching their eyelids.   Some saw plaintiff Lucie Kim's suit as political correctness run amok, while Asian groups and others believed Cyrus had gone out of her way to mock them.  

When Kim's lawyer, Henry Lee, asked for a reason for the dismissal, Sohigian, a methodical and soft-spoken judge, said simply that he agreed with the defense's arguments and that he considered Cyrus’ gesture to be protected parody.   The case was a minor bellwether not only because it touched upon the volatile ethnic sensitivities that come into play nearly every day in Los Angeles, but because Lee attempted to paint the Hannah Montana icon as a business entity that had engaged in racial discrimination by presenting to Asians an offensive facial expression.   Cyrus' lawyer Bryan Sullivan began the demurrer hearing by noting that since Kim had viewed Cyrus’ eye-stretching antics on the internet, she lacked legal standing as a plaintiff and that Cyrus was an individual, not a business.   Au contraire, Lee protested.   “A business establishment,” he said, “was any for-profit commercial enterprise. Her actual name is a trademark ... Every time she sells herself she is acting as a business. The defendant is in fact a business establishment ... I think a jury needs to decide if her slanty-eyed gesture is a racial insult.”   “I haven’t seen anything like that since I was 12 years old,” Lee, who is Asian, told the court. “If [Cyrus] is going to put her face out on the market and make money on it, she can’t use it to communicate a racial insult.”   Afterward, Lee told TheWrap that an appeal of Sohigian’s ruling is a possibility that will be considered.

R&B crooner Chris Brown checked in with Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg Thursday afternoon to show that he’s on the road to becoming a model citizen, nine months after brutally slapping around his girlfriend at the time, the chanteuse Rihanna.   Brown was accompanied to Department 123 by celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos and a Praetorian guard of sheriff’s deputies -- who requested reporters and court bystanders to “give us two feet.”   The 20-year-old pop star sat quietly through the brief proceedings attired in a suit jacket, vest and tie, along with three-inch cuffed blue jeans.   Judge Schnegg seemed to feel the celebrity power as she glowingly announced that the document before her was “an extremely favorable progress report,” and noted that Brown had served 66 hours of community service.   She was quickly, if  gratefully, corrected by Geragos, who pointed out that the figure is now more than 100 hours performed in Richmond, Virginia, where Brown lives.   Schnegg almost apologetically reminded Brown that he must appear in L.A. court personally every three months until the terms of his single-count plea agreement for assault are satisfied.   “Once you have completed your community service and domestic-violence program,” Schnegg assured the singer, “you no longer have to appear in person.” She also said that, while Brown remains free to travel anywhere domestically, he had only to ask to get her permission to fly out of the country to perform.   With that, Brown’s squad of eight deputies took him down a back staircase and out onto Temple Street. There, past a yellow-tape gauntlet of news crews, awaited Brown’s ride. Without saying a word he strode past the press and into the inevitable black Suburban.   He’ll return Feb. 18 for the next hearing.

“Where do you want to hold the deposition,” one New York lawyer asked another in L.A. on Thursday. “Madison Square Garden or the Javits Center?”   The morning kicked off the first of many conferences and hearings between lawyers for disgraced investment broker Stanley Chais and a conga line of plaintiffs, including the California attorney general’s office.   The lawyer’s joke about the deposition venue referred as much to its marathon nature as it did to the intense interest Chais’ interrogation will generate within legal and financial circles.   At this stage the attorneys and Superior Court Judge Elizabeth White are merely talking about a future in which evidence will be traded under discovery rules and, ultimately, Chais, 83, will be deposed. The civil trial itself hovers on a distant horizon.   Chais has been identified in court papers as the Los Angeles “feeder” for the Moby Dick of Ponzi schemers, Bernard Madoff. It’s the curious nature of Chais’ bicoastal notoriety that some local media refer to him as a New York investor, while New York press accounts call him a Beverly Hills financier. In any event, Chais maintained homes in both locales and is currently bunkered down in his Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan.   Like Madoff on the East Coast, Chais was viewed in L.A. and Hollywood with awe as an investment shaman who earned clients 25 percent returns. It turned out, however, that he merely forwarded people’s money to Madoff’s wallet in New York. Last September Jerry Brown held a highly publicized news conference to announce a multi-count complaint against Chais and his Lambeth, Brighton and Popham companies.   “Basically,” Deputy Attorney General Alexandra Robert Gordon (pictured above with Brown) told KPCC FM’s Brian Watt at that time, “Lawyers and doctors and playwrights, people in writing groups, people at the Mulholland Tennis Club talked to each other about these terrific returns that they were getting from this seeming financial genius Mr. Chais. It was all very exclusive, it was all somewhat hush-hush. People were really lining up to invest with Mr. Chais.”   Today Gordon, who works out of the AG’s San Francisco office, struggled to make sure the state’s claims against Chais didn’t get lost in the shuffle of other plaintiffs, who today included Leghorn Investments and Bottlebrush Investments.   “We are the state of California,” she reminded Judge White.   Chais, said to be in ill health with a bone-marrow disorder, is battling a three-front war. Besides the Los Angeles action, in New York he faces a fraud complaint filed by the Securities Exchange Commission, and is a target of restitution actions by Irving Picard, the pitbull trustee representing Madoff’s victims.   Chais, whose Chais Family Foundation was a notable source of money to Jewish charities (distributing nearly $11 million in 2007, according to IRS tax returns), has already weathered a few lawsuits, including one by screenwriter Eric Roth (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,”“Forrest Gump”), which was settled in September under undisclosed terms. The proceedings in the Stanley Mosk Courthouse promise to be long, complicated and perhaps a little confusing. Type in Chais’ name in a Nexis legal document search and a message appears on monitors asking, “Did you mean ‘CHAOS.’” Chaos may well be an inevitable by-product of this case that will partly combine the state’s interests with that of individual plaintiffs. The AG’s complaint alleges that Chais made almost $270 million over the past decade and, among other things, seeks $25 million in penalties from the defendant. Jerry Brown and Alexandra Gordon seem determined to get as much of that as they can.   They are, after all, the state of California.

From the moment Carrie Prejean opened her mouth to just say “No” to gay marriage, some Republicans have viewed the former beauty queen as the next Sarah Palin. Indeed, according to Prejean’s new memoir, Palin has reached out to her and, in turn, the onetime Miss California views the onetime Alaska governor as a heroine.   (For an interesting Palin/Prejean side-by-side, see Michael Fullilove’s Financial Times piece, “Palin And the Sex-Tape Beauty Queen Are Spookily Similar.”)   Yesterday TMZ spoke with Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz who, despite the firestorm swirling around Carrie Prejean’s self-pleasuring sex video(s), insists she’s GOP electoral timber.   Prejean, Chaffetz told the celebrity site, “has the ability to draw crowds and if she has a strong message to go with that, who knows what she can do? She has star power which can open doors.”   Frightwing pundit Ann Coulter, who appears with Prejean in the 2010 Great American Conservative Women Calendar, has been quick to blame Prejean’s current predicament on “these pornographers” and “broken promises by the media.”   "She came from a broken family,” Coulter explained to the Washington Examiner, “and girls who grow up without their fathers are often going to be found to be a little more promiscuous than the average girl. And I hope being a Christian will help her get over that."   Apparently not all conservative groups are gulping down the Coulter Kool-Aid, however.   According to several sources, including Californians Against Hate, the anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage, which until recently touted the “Carrie Effect” and Prejean as “the future of our movement, and the future of America,” removed Prejean from its Web site Monday.   “The whole episode is weird, sad and ugly,” NOM prez Maggie Gallagher told LifeSiteNews.com, a family values site that, among other things, decries UNICEF’s fundraising on Halloween.   Even so, Gallagher could not help but point her blame finger away from Prejean.   “No one,” Gallagher said, “should face this kind of invasion of their privacy simply because they believe marriage is the union of husband and wife.”

The woman who calls herself Billie Jean Jackson met her Waterloo – or rather, her Never, Neverland -- in court on Tuesday.

Jackson is also the woman who calls herself the mother of the late Michael Jackson’s 7-year-old son, Prince Michael II, aka Blanket. Her real name is Lavon Powlis.   She began legal proceedings late last year, when Jackson was alive, to gain weekend visitation rights, participation in Blanket’s education -- and a billion dollars in support.   After the King of Pop’s death, Billie Jean (she says Jackson named the song after her) shifted legal gears, petitioning for the custody of young Blanket.   The 60-ish Jackson has a long legal record of both suing Jackson and trespassing at his Neverland Ranch -- which has earned her several arrests (see mugshot) and court suggestions to seek psychiatric help.   Before her hearing Tuesday morning, she anxiously got up and left Department 5 in the civil courts building several times, wheeling her large maroon leather bookbag out with her.  

To his credit, Judge Mitchell Beckloff played it straight and showed her plenty of patience in allowing her to plead her case. Michael Jackson estate attorney Diane Goodman was on hand to parry any trouble from a speakerphone.   “What proof can you show me you’re the mother?” Judge Beckloff asked Billie Jean, a slightly built woman who wore a kind of pink tank tube and slacks. “If you’re the mother, you were in a hospital, right?”   “No, no, there are other ways ...” Jackson trailed off.   “The birth record says it was a surrogacy,” Goodman’s voice broke in.   “I was pregnant, and Michael took him,” Jackson said. “If we took DNA tests, that would prove it.”   But the judge needed a little more evidence before he began ordering such tests. Jackson tried to provide it with circular arguments.   “I’m the mother,” she said. “I’m Michael’s wife. There was a marriage ... on May 5, 1986.”   When Beckloff tried to get Jackson focused on documents and paperwork, she swam toward fantasy and paranoia.   “I don’t think I saw a doctor,” she told Beckloff. “I don’t want to tell you in open court about it because it sounds like a miracle. Michael sings to me on his album. He called me Lavon, a name my mother gave me ... I’ve been stalked. The police would threaten me. Michael’s family threatened me and had me arrested.”   On one level Jackson’s sputtering performance was grotesquely sad. But then, it also confirmed the wonder of a democracy that allows even the delusional their moment in court, although that moment may take up many people’s time.   Nevertheless, it’s also worth remembering that Jackson’s story was carried by much of the American and British media at the time it first surfaced -- Extra, Access Hollywood, WENN, Associated Press and others all carried stories of varying credulity about her claim, stories that, startlingly enough, got a second wind following the pop singer's death.    But there were no celebrity or mainstream media in Department 5 Tuesday. After listening to Jackson speak some more about a Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department plot to keep her and Michael Jackson separated, Judge Beckloff declared she hadn’t shown him a “biological connection” to Blanket and denied her petition.   “Thank you very much, Miss Jackson,” the judge said. “Good luck.”   Jackson stood silently for a moment, absorbing the news that her moment in the sun was over. She turned away from the bench and dragged her baggage cart out of the courtroom.   The light in her eyes went out. She had lost more than a billion dollars.

Diana Tamayo, one of the five sexy young Burglar Bunch members who are suspected of robbing the homes of such sexy young celebrities as Lindsay Lohan (pictured), Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom, declined to enter a plea Tuesday. Instead, Tamayo, who is out on bond, and her lawyers asked Superior Court Commissioner Donald Kennedy to put off her arraignment to Dec. 2 – a postponement date also granted to alleged cohort Nicholas Frank Prugo. Kennedy granted the request, but then said there were issues with Tamayo’s $20,000 bail – namely, the fact that the District Attorney’s office hadn’t been consulted on the figure, which, in the felony complaint papers, is a suggested $100,000. Tamayo’s lawyers told Kennedy they’d arrived at that amount with the Los Angeles Police Dept., which didn’t cut much ice with Commissioner Kennedy. “You’ve been practicing law long enough,” the commissioner deadpanned, “to know that the police department doesn’t decide what day it is.” Ultimately, however, Deputy D.A. Sarika Kapoor said she had no objections to Tamayo’s bail remaining at $20,000 for the time being. That could change when Tamayo is arraigned. A tired-looking Tamayo then slipped out of Department 30 with her lawyers, who told news media they would not take questions. Tamayo, 19, was attired in black, form-fitting slacks, high-heeled sandals and a tight top pulled over a silky blouse. With her long dark hair, she could’ve been an American Apparel model -- if American Apparel carried a Twilight line for teen burglary suspects.

(Part 1: Prescriptions-on-Demand Gets Riskier.)

Wherever there's been a celebrity craving drugs, there's always been a pliant doctor with a ready prescription pad.

From Wallace Reid to Bela Lugosi to Judy Garland, Hollywood is veined with a rich history of falling stars who've depended on a collection of enablers to feed their addictions.

Elvis Presley's story was among the first to reveal a disturbing paradigm of mutual dependency between celebrities and their doctors: A celebrity receives prescriptions for drugs for recreational pleasure, or for relief from insomnia or back pain; the obscure doctor in return is brushed by the comet’s tail of fame.

The earliest public perceptions of celebrity addiction came from hole-in-the-arm fables inspired by such demimonde figures as Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and Lenny Bruce -- troubled troubadours and tragic clowns victimized by shadowy pushers or partners.

But this view broadened in 1977, when Presley died with 14 perfectly legal drugs in his bloodstream, courtesy of his personal physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos.

"Dr. Nick” had prescribed the King thousands of uppers and downers over the years, to help feed a habit caused by back pain and sleeplessness that began during Presley's army years.

As we explored in Part 1 of this story, even though prosecutors are taking a harder look at negligent celebrity doctors, criminal culpability is hard to come by. And it will be tough to stamp out a practice with such deep roots.

Not all Dr. Feelgoods set out to be prescription vending machines, Dr. James Gagne, a Los Angeles expert in the field of addiction behavior, told TheWrap. Though sometimes the demands are of the celebrities are "obvious when they walk through the door," Gagne says, these relationships -- and the warning signs of dangerous addiction -- often grow over the course of time.

Drew Pinsky, co-author of the recently published “The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America,” says many doctors get sucked into a slow spiral of catering to stars.

Pinsky believes that doctors who attempt to treat stars’ chronic pain with opiates in order to bask in the glow of celebrity risk getting swallowed up by these bigger-than-life narcissists.

“Imagine the power [celebrities] wield,” He says. “They begin by saying, ‘You’re the best doctor in the world,’ but when the doctor tries to cut their dosage, they’ll say, ‘I’m going to tell everyone what a terrible doctor you are – I’m going to ruin your career!”

Preliminary hearings in the Anna Nicole Smith case suggested that the relationship works both ways, as both Dr. Sandeep Kapoor and Dr. Khristine Eroshevich became personal friends of their glamorous patient -- and felt helpless to curb her demands for drugs.

Though he was exonerated of wrongdoing by an official inquiry into Elvis' death, Dr. Nick had his medical license permanently suspended in later years after admitting to the Tennessee medical board that he had overprescribed to hundreds of patients.

Though he was exonerated of wrongdoing by an official inquiry into Elvis' death, Dr. Nick had his medical license permanently suspended in later years after admitting to the Tennessee medical board that he had overprescribed to hundreds of patients.

More recently, Dr. Jules Lusman, who was found to have improperly prescribed painkillers to Courtney Love, Wynona Ryder and others, did lose his license -- one of the few who has paid a real price. The professional verdicts against such celebrity doctors remains checkered.

Heath Ledger: The cast of characters who contributed to Ledger's death may never be named. In early 2008, the Australian actor was found dead of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, doxylamine, and his death was ruled accidental.   By late February, investigators had cleared two of his U.S. physicians; the case was closed later that year after investigators said they couldn’t identify a “viable target” -- and it’s still not known how he obtained the deadly cocktail of prescriptions.   Eric Douglas: Three years before his accidental 2004 death from mixing alcohol, OxyContin and tranquilizers, the actor/standup comic sued his Los Angeles psychiatrist for malpractice. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas claimed that Dr. William O. Leader, who treated him for cocaine and alcohol addiction, loaded up Douglas with so many dangerous drug combinations – often prescribed after phone “consultations” -- that he suffered permanent physical damage.    Leader settled the lawsuit with Douglas -- though by that time, Leader had lost his license and had been sentenced to five years in prison for prescribing narcotics to two other people with known drug problems.   Brian Wilson: Ironicially, the most symbiotic doctor-patient relationship of all involved getting the celebirty off drugs.   In 1976 California psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy began playing both roles of Iago and Svengali to then-beached Beach Boy Wilson, who was vastly overweight and strung out on drugs. Land emotionally separated Wilson from his wife and his band -- not only keeping the songwriting legend irrigated on a smorgasbord of psychotropic medications but demanding “total therapeutic authority over the patient and the patient’s environment.”   Eventually the California Board of Medical Quality stepped in and  Landy gave up his practice. Landy, however, was soon telling Wilson how to write his music. Wilson’s wife was finally able to break Landy’s power over Wilson through a lawsuit, allowing Wilson to recover his abilities and career.   Don Simpson: The Paramount producer (pictured above) died in 1996 of a “combined drug intoxication.” According to Charles Fleming’s biography "High Concept," Simpson spent $60,000 a month on prescription drugs. 

Following an L.A. Times series exposing an illegal detoxification program that had operated on Simpson’s estate, his Westside psychiatrist, Dr. Nomi Fredrick, was investigated by the LAPD, DEA and California Medical Board. 

The resulting report condemned Fredrick for overprescribing addictive drugs to patients. “According to the judge,” a later Times feature reported, “Simpson's entire house was ‘replete with drugs, alcohol and a staff of sycophants to do his bidding.’"

No criminal charges were brought against Fredrick, and although she lost her medical license in 2000, she won it back on appeal three years later.     Then there's Dr. David Kipper.   Ozzy Osbourne accused Kipper of medicating the rocker so much that it caused Osbourne to stumble through his reality TV show in a foggy daze.   After a nine-year investigation into charges he over-prescribed addictive pharmaceuticals to Hollywood celebrities and ran unsanctioned detox programs out of luxury hotel suites, in 2007 Kipper received a California Medical Board reprimand.   For poor record-keeping. 

Only a few feet separated celebrity oddity Nicole Richie from paparazzi this afternoon, but for once the photogs took no pictures.   Instead, they sat quietly, unrepresented by lawyers, in a downtown civil court hearing while a judge listened to testimony about their rear-ending Richie’s car Oct. 5.   At the end of the day, Richie was granted an extension of an existing temporary restraining order against the two men, Ivon Miguel and Eduardo Cerri Arrivebene.   The paps, who are facing criminal charges related to the incident, must remain 50 yards away from Richie and her two toddler children, and not communicate with them.   For good measure, Judge Carol Boas Goodson prohibited them from owning guns.   If it weren’t for the “Richie” tattoo on the back of her neck, coughing, wan-looking plaintiff could have been mistaken for a waif from a Dickens novel.   She testified how the two men had been tailing her down Wilshire Boulevard from the moment she’d left her home for a business meeting in Beverly Hills. After turning off the boulevard, Richie stopped her 2008 Range Rover at an intersection and was struck from behind.   Her boyfriend, rock singer/MTV personality Joel Madden, was not in the car during the fender bender but testified that Miguel and Arrivebene were constantly staking out the couple’s home.   The contentious nature of both anti-pap TROs and intrusive technologies that are pulverizing celebrity privacy quickly became apparent when a Superior Court public information officer swooped down on Arrivebene’s girlfriend, accusing her of taking pictures in court with her cell phone.   The young woman, dressed entirely in black, loudly disputed the allegation, causing the proceedings to stop briefly. It was soon arrivederci for Arrivebene’s companion, who was escorted out but then let back in. No sooner had she sat down than she was calling out to the judge, protesting the description of the car that hit Richie’s as “uninsured.”   “That’s not true!” the woman declared. “I have insurance!” Apparently Arrivebene was driving his girlfriend’s car at the time of the accident.   After everyone calmed down, Judge Goodson ordered the extension of the restraining order. Richie’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, smiled at the sentence.   One droll bit of trivia to emerge was that Miguel and Arrivebene often work as a team for the pap agency X-17 – with Miguel doing the yelling at Richie and other subjects, while Arrivebene takes the pictures of their reactions.   Arrivebene was at the wheel during the crash and managed, according to Geragos, to snap pictures at the accident scene of Richie being taken to the hospital. He was soon after arrested.