The bitter authorized fued between Priscilla Presley and her former enterprise companion escalated this week.
Brigitte Kruse, the founding father of Agoura Hills-based GWS Auctions Inc. and her enterprise affiliate Kevin Fialko, on Monday filed a brand new fraud and breach of contract swimsuit in opposition to Presley in Los Angeles Superior Court docket.
The swimsuit alleges that Elvis’s ex-wife “undermined their enterprise ventures” and exploited the dying of her daughter Lisa Marie Presley with a view to acquire management over her belief and Graceland. They’re looking for greater than $50 million in damages.
The pair allege they “invested hundreds of hours of their time” and “tens of millions of {dollars} into Priscilla” to revive her public picture and model solely to have their enterprise relationship severed by Presley.
The swimsuit calls Presley, 80, an “opportunist” and describes a tumultuous relationship between her and her daughter.
Presley’s lawyer Wayne Harman was not obtainable for remark.
Kruse first filed a breach of contract swimsuit in opposition to Elvis’s former spouse in Florida two years in the past after she reduce ties with the joint enterprise enterprise they shaped to to arrange a number of corporations to use Priscilla Presley’s identify and picture and to bolster Kruse’s Elvis memorabilia auctions.
Final 12 months Presley, sued Kruse, who’s about half her age, and her enterprise associates for fraud and elder abuse in L.A., claiming she was pressured right into a “type of indentured servitude,” main her into signing away 80% of her earnings. Kruse denied the claims.
Whereas Kruse’s Los Angeles swimsuit surfaces lots of the earlier claims, it additionally offers a counter-narrative to a number of of the allegations contained in Presley’s fraud swimsuit, her lawyer mentioned.
“The proof will set up that the true victims listed below are my shoppers, who invested tens of millions and years of arduous work into revitalizing Priscilla Presley’s model, solely to be betrayed and falsely accused as soon as the cash was on the desk and each private and enterprise challenge had been resolved,” mentioned their lawyer Jordan Matthews in an announcement.
The swimsuit contends that Priscilla “strong-arm[ed]” Elvis’s father Vernon in 1979 on his deathbed into making her co-executor of his son’s property by placing a lien on Graceland and taking on administration of the belief.
It additional alleges that Priscilla “in the end needed to regulate” her daughter’s belief and Graceland.
Earlier than Lisa Marie died abruptly in Jan. 2023 on the age of 54, her relationship along with her mom was severely strained. She refused to stroll the crimson carpet or sit with Presley on the Golden Globes to rejoice the a number of nominations of Baz Luhrmann’s movie “Elvis,” in line with the lawsuit.
On the time, Lisa Marie was in means of eradicating her mom as the only real trustee of irrevocable life insurance coverage coverage and was “threatening to sue her,” the swimsuit states.
In her criticism, Kruse contends that she and Fialko, “labored to maintain the household collectively, “ and with Presley’s publicist organized for the ladies to look on the crimson carpet collectively and sit subsequent to at least one one other in the course of the award ceremony.
Two days later, Lisa Marie suffered cardiac arrest and was rushed to West Hills Hospital.
Based on the criticism, Presley didn’t observe her daughter’s superior care directive directions that acknowledged that she needed her “life to be extended so long as doable throughout the limits of usually accepted well being care requirements.” A replica of the well being care directive from 2010 is included as an exhibit to the swimsuit.
Following Lisa Marie’s dying, Presley went to court docket to problem an modification that had earlier eliminated her as a trustee of Lisa Marie’s property, the Promenade Belief and made her granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, sole trustee. The matter was settled 5 months later.
Kruse alleges that she and Fialko brokered a cope with Keough on Presley’s behalf that secured her a $2.4 million payout and “a seven-figure deal for Priscilla’s son, Navarone.”
Kruse and her firm GWS Auctions are also being sued by the Elvis Presley Property over a cache of paperwork from Elvis and Col. Tom Parker that they declare had been “improperly and illegally supplied on the market at public sale.” An lawyer for Kruse has disputed the declare, saying in an announcement that she had knowledgeable the Elvis property of the existence of paperwork in 2021.
