Court assigns new judge, delays Lutfi v. Spears trial

This week’s scheduled jury trial involving Britney Spears and her alleged former manager, Sam Lutfi, was postponed after a change of judge.

Britney Spears and recent fiance Jason Trawick in central Kiev, Ukraine, Sept. 25, 2011. (AP Photo)

The parties have ten days from Jan. 24 to contest the new judge or move to trial since early settlement conferences failed.

Lutfi sued Spears in early 2009 for breach of contract.  He claims wrong termination and seeks his share of Spears’ entertainment earnings.  He sued her parents at the same time with allegations of defamation, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress within days of a judge ordering a permanent 3-year restraining order against him in February 2009.

If the parties agree to the new judge, Michael C. Solner, he will rule on the admissibility recently filed court documents by Lutfi.  They include sealed records from Spears’ 2007, 2008 child custody case involving confidential court-ordered drug tests and child visitation reports.  Lutfi lived with Spears in 2007 and acted as a conduit of communication between her lawyers during Spears’ battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline for custody of their two children.  Lutfi obtained the sealed documents.

Attorneys for the conservatorship oppose the documents’ admissibility citing case law and Lutfi’s lack of proper effort to first unseal documents from the custody case.

In the past year Lutfi has either demanded Spears’ medical records  and drug test results or tried to expose related records.  He claims the records support that Lynne Spears, Britney’s mother, lied in her declaration and in her book, saying that Lutfi aimed to put Spears into a drug induced coma, cut Spears’ phone lines and rendered her automobiles useless.  Lynne’s February 2008 declaration and her book lie at the heart of the controversy.

Lutfi claims Britney was an Adderall addict and he was trying to save her life.  He says the drug tests will prove it.

Spears was involuntarily hospitalized twice while with Lutfi through early 2008.  Spears has been in her father’s care and under a conservatorship since February 2008 when the conservatorship obtained an immediate restraining order against Lutfi.