The Los Angeles auction house slapped with a lawsuit by Michael Jackson vowed Friday that it would go ahead with its plans to sell off the contents of Jackson’s Neverland estate and, if necessary, pay off its fees and expenses from the proceeds.
Darren Julien, the owner of a boutique auction house with a large clientele of A-list celebrities, expressed indignation at the suit, which accuses him of trying to sell the litigation-happy pop star’s possessions without his permission.
“They are the ones that sought out and contacted us,” Julien told TheWrap from Ireland, where he is mounting an advance exhibition of some of the auction items to drum up international publicity. “The only reason we are mounting this auction is because they asked us to. We are a very respectable operation.”
Julien said he had been in regular contact with both Jackson and his closest confidant, the mysterious Dr. Tohme Tohme, and had been under the impression they were happy with everything he was doing -- right up to the time the lawsuit was filed on Wednesday.
The litigation -- in which his actions are described as “malicious, fraudulent, extreme, outrageous and without any legal justification whatsoever” -- came as a complete surprise, he said.
Among the auction items – numerous enough to fill 10 semi trucks -- are the crested gates of Neverland, Jackson’s Popemobile-style electric vehicles and dozens of his fabled sequined gloves and military-style stage uniforms. (Click here for a secret peek at Jacko's stash.)
Julien said 30 his employees spent several weeks last summer clearing out Neverland under a veil of complete secrecy. They then put the contents in storage, photographing and cataloguing each item ahead of the week-long public exhibition and four-day auction due to be staged next month in the old Robinson’s May space next to the Beverly Hilton hotel.
A New York design house plans to turn the empty Robinson’s May into the closest replica of Neverland it can manage. Julien has said he expects the sale to fetch somewhere in the $2-4 million range. That, though, is a deliberately low figure and the final haul could easily reach the tens of millions.
Having initially thought he would contact the Jackson camp to clear up any misunderstandings in person, Julien said he had now decided to wait until he was formally served with the suit on his return to the United States and then leave any response to his own lawyers.
He said he wasn’t worried about the new lawsuit, or the risk that he won’t be reimbursed for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has spent. “It’s not for us to try to figure out what this is about, but I don’t think there’s a logical explanation for it,” he said.
Jackson has a track record of starting legal fights with auction houses. In 2007 the New York house Guernsey’s -- which has a similar reputation and client list to Julien’s -- took on the sale of Jackson family items left in a storage locker in New Jersey and abandoned for so long a bankruptcy judge gave them to the storage company.
