Priscilla Presley lawsuit gains a new bombshell in the fine print
On Valentine's Day, we broke the news over at The Daily Beast: Priscilla Presley was being sued by Priscilla Presley, the company.
We had learned that in October a woman named Brigitte Kruse had filed the lawsuit, alleging that she had helped Priscilla through some very difficult financial times. But just when things were beginning to turn around for the 78-year-old former wife of Elvis Presley, and a Sofia Coppola-directed film about her was about to come out, Priscilla suddenly locked Kruse out and went back on their business arrangements.
Kruse — an auctioneer who goes by Dame Brigitte Kruse after she was knighted by a member of the Italian royal family in 2020 — is suing for breach of contract and related matters, and she enjoyed some early success as the court in Orlando agreed to schedule a May 15 evidentiary hearing to hash out some jurisdictional issues: Priscilla lives in Los Angeles and says she has nothing to do with Florida, where Kruse and the Priscilla Presley Partners LLC was located. Kruse counters that not only had Priscilla created the company with her in Florida, but she also had plans to move there in 2022, and had sought help from Donald Trump's realtor to find a place after meeting with the former president.
The story quickly caught fire, and most news outlets focused on Kruse's claim that when she left her auctioneering business to form the new company, Priscilla was "60 days from insolvency."
Since those stories came out, Priscilla was scheduled to sit for a deposition in April and she made a request to be able to appear by videoconference for the May 15 hearing so she doesn't have to travel to Florida for it.
In the meantime, Kruse's legal team entered a slightly more detailed amended complaint on April 22, which adds a few more company names that she helped Priscilla create, and three more causes of action to the lawsuit as a result.
But it took some detailed comparing of the original and new complaint before we found one small new detail that was actually a bit of a bombshell.
It was some additional material added to the paragraph that begins on page four of the lawsuit claiming that Priscilla was almost flat broke when Brigitte’s hard work bailed her out. Here is the full, new paragraph in the new version of the complaint, which describes the situation that Kruse and an employee, Kevin Fialko, found once they began to take over Priscilla's business matters...
18. Immediately upon taking the role, it became clear that Priscilla’s financial position was far worse than expected; Priscilla was approximately 60 days from insolvency. Additionally, Priscilla was faced with previously acquired unpaid tax debts totaling nearly $700,000 (with the possibility of imminent federal liens), and numerous “past-due” invoices and late payments, with no promise of future income. There was also the threat of a lawsuit against Priscilla by her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, which Kruse and Fialko worked to protect Priscilla.
Yes, that last part (with emphasis added) is new to the lawsuit, and there's no more detail to it.
So, Brigitte Kruse is claiming that at the time she and Priscilla formed Priscilla Presley Partners LLC in August 2022, Priscilla was facing the threat of being sued by her own daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.
Sued over what? The complaint doesn't say. But the lawsuit does suggest that Kruse worked extremely closely with Priscilla for a time, and was even a signatory on her family trusts. Could her legal team be testing the waters, letting Priscilla know that if the case goes to trial, a lot more is liable to be made public than the details of signing a contract to create a marketing company?
We've made requests to interview Kruse, without any success, but we expect she's been told by her lawyers it's best to keep quiet at this point.
If she could give an interview, we'd like to ask her about Priscilla's Scientology involvement. In February, Priscilla paid a very public visit to Austrian artist and longtime Scientologist Gottfried Helnwein, which got us wondering about where Priscilla stood.
In 2015, Lisa Marie told us that not only had she left Scientology for good, but she had also convinced her mother Priscilla and daughter Riley Keough to leave with her. Has Priscilla gone back in? Well, perhaps that too will come out in the hearings and filings of this lawsuit, along with whatever Lisa Marie was threatening to sue her mother over before she tragically died in January 2023.
We'll keep watching.
Grant Cardone buying followers?
A reader pointed us to the website of Social Crow, a service that allows you to buy followers to increase your social media reach.
And look who is treated as one of their success stories…
Bonus items from our tipsters
These humanitarians go to eleven!
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Eleven 'humanitarians' for the Robinetts? ?? Their FSM must be very happy. At least until the next 2pm Thursday when their 'stats' didn't go up. You can't harpoon every whale you know.
Why would Lisa Marie sue Priscilla? I will watch that development with baited breath.
Grant Cardone choosing style over substance? Fake numbers of 'followers' instead of honest recruitment? He reminds me of one of my favorite albums, Jethro Tull's 'Dick with a Brick'. Or something like that.
Today’s post just makes me sad. At age 78 you should be resting on your laurels, not having your dirty laundry aired to the public. It would not surprise me to find Scientology machinations involved in Priscilla’s actions. I hope Riley stayed out after Lisa Marie announced that she, her mom and Riley had left. I know other celebrities can have money problems but it seems like a disproportionate number Scientologist celebrities get sucked dry. Scientology only cares about the dollar, you stop glittering when you’re broke.