A month after a Florida judge said Priscilla Presley’s 2024 financial elder abuse claims would take the lead over a related 2023 lawsuit accusing her of breach of contract, the former business partners facing off against Priscilla in both cases are expanding their legal war.
On Monday, memorabilia dealer Brigitte Kruse and investor Kevin Fialko filed a new $50 million fraud and breach of contract lawsuit against Presley, who is scheduled to tour Australia in November, in Beverly Hills that re-ups many of the same causes of action recently placed on the back burner in Orlando. But the new complaint doesn’t stop there. It also escalates the acrimony with the eye-popping claim that Priscilla hastened her daughter Lisa Marie Presley’s tragic death in January 2023 for financial gain. And it adds Stan Lee’s ex-manager, Keya Morgan, as a new co-defendant tied to claims that he interfered with the partners’ contracts with Priscilla.
Regarding its most shocking new claim, the complaint attaches Lisa Marie’s advanced health care directive as an exhibit. On the document, Lisa Marie wrote her initials and two exclamation points next to the line that said she wanted her life to be “prolonged as long as possible within the limits of generally accepted healthcare standards.” In the new lawsuit, Kruse and Fialko allege that Priscilla rushed to West Hills Hospital and took control of her daughter’s care when Lisa Marie suffered a small bowel obstruction in January 2023 as a complication from weight loss surgery.
“Despite Lisa’s clear directive to ‘prolong her life,’ Priscilla pulled the plug within hours of Lisa being admitted, and before her granddaughter, Riley [Keough] was able to get to the hospital,” the new lawsuit alleges. The complaint says Priscilla then demanded that Kruse issue a media statement announcing the death. According to the complaint, “Priscilla knew that Lisa’s death neutralized the threat of Lisa’s efforts to have Priscilla removed as the sole trustee of Lisa’s irrevocable life insurance trust, and Priscilla ultimately wanted to control the Promenade Trust and Graceland.”
In a lengthy statement sent to Rolling Stone, Priscilla’s lawyer, Marty Singer, blasted the new lawsuit as “one of the most shameful, ridiculous, salacious, and meritless lawsuits I have seen in my practice.”
“Accusing a grieving mother of contributing to her daughter’s death is not savvy advocacy; it is malicious character assassination and should be broadly condemned. These fabricated claims have absolutely no validity and we are confident this case will be dismissed,” Singer wrote in his statement. He went on to slam the lawsuit as a “sad and vicious attempt to falsely tarnish the reputation of an eighty-year-old woman in blatant retaliation for bringing a lawsuit to redress the wrongful conduct of Brigitte Kruse, Kevin Fialko, and their coconspirators.”
According to both the Florida case and the new Los Angeles County-based complaint, Kruse and Fialko allege that after Lisa Marie’s death, Priscilla’s fortunes changed, and she subsequently walked out on a series of companies they had formed to exploit her name, image, and likeness. They allege they invested heavily to pull Priscilla back from the brink of insolvency and were later shunned, in violation of their agreements.
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As Rolling Stone previously reported, a few weeks after Lisa Marie’s death, Priscilla challenged a 2016 amendment to her daughter’s Promenade Trust that removed Priscilla as a trustee and replaced her with Keough. The change meant Priscilla lost influence over her daughter’s assets, including Graceland mansion, its archives, and Lisa Marie’s 15 percent interest in Elvis Presley Enterprises, the company that owns and manages Elvis’ name, image, and likeness. Priscilla wanted the court to declare the amendment “invalid.”
With a potential legal war looming, Keough reached a generous settlement with her grandmother in a matter of months. Under the deal, Priscilla received a $1 million lump-sum payment off the top of Lisa Marie’s $25 million life insurance policy. Keough also agreed to pay Priscilla $50,000 to resign as co-trustee of the irrevocable trust whose sole asset was the life insurance policy. And Priscilla was awarded an annual salary of $100,000 for 10 years for her new role as a “special advisor” to the Promenade Trust.
Five months after she settled with Keough, Priscilla was hit with the first breach of contract lawsuit over the Kruse and Fialko partnership. The author, actress, and ex-wife of Elvis quickly sought to dismiss the complaint. Then last summer, she filed her bombshell claims of financial elder abuse.
In her July 2024 complaint, Priscilla claimed Kruse and Fialko “manipulated and defrauded” her out of more than $1 million. She said the pair placed a “stranglehold” on her finances with contracts that gave Kruse a controlling 51 percent interest in Priscilla’s intellectual property in perpetuity. She said another related venture gave Priscilla only a 20 percent share. Priscilla and her lawyers called the deals too “egregious” and “unconscionable” to be enforceable.
In the July 9 ruling that stayed the Florida litigation in favor of Priscilla’s elder abuse lawsuit, the Orlando-based judge said he was placing the breach of contract case in a holding pattern because it didn’t make sense to “enforce rights under agreements” when the “validity” of the agreements remained “squarely in dispute in the California case.” That ruling set the stage for Kruse and Fialko to file their claims on the West Coast.
“My clients are very adamant they want to get to the merits of the case. They want the truth out, and they want to be vindicated,” Kruse and Fialko’s lawyer, Jordan Matthews, tells Rolling Stone. “They want their day in court.”
While Priscilla maintains she was duped into signing the business contracts with Kruse and Fialko, the former partners say she understood everything. Video unearthed by Rolling Stone shows Priscilla signing the contracts at Kruse’s house with a lawyer present.
In a statement sent to Rolling Stone late Wednesday, Morgan defended his work with Priscilla. “I’ve known Priscilla Presley and her family for many years, and she has a heart of gold, is an incredible human being, and a true legend and American icon [who] should be protected,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, I’ve read a lot of malicious lies recently which are not true, and the truth will ultimately prevail.”
From Rolling Stone US
