Lawyers who previously represented Britney Spears’ self-described former manager are suing him to try and collect nearly $200,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs allegedly due for their representation of him in a lawsuit their onetime client filed against the pop star more than seven years ago.
Freedman & Taitelman LLP brought the lawsuit Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Osama “Sam” Lutfi, who settled his lawsuit against the 34-year-old Spears this summer. Freedman & Taitelman believe Lutfi “will receive a substantial settlement payment” from the lawsuit filed against the singer in February 2009, the firm’s complaint states.
The suit seeks a court declaration that the law firm is entitled to $198,470 in attorneys’ fees and related costs.
Lutfi could not be immediately reached.
The law firm ceased its representation of Lutfi in late 2009 when Freedman & Taitelman lawyers found out that Lutfi was “communicating with opposing parties who were represented in other matters in which plaintiff was involved,” the lawsuit states.
Freedman & Taitelman also learned that Lutfi contacted one of the firm’s other clients “for the purpose of engaging in an activity that would violate a restraining order, claiming that he was doing so with plaintiff’s approval,” the lawsuit states.
Lutfi refused to heed admonitions from his lawyers to stop contacting opposing parties and the firm’s clients, the suit states.
In January 2011, the law firm filed court papers securing its right to recover attorneys’ fees and costs in connection with the Lutfi representation, the lawsuit states.
Lutfi was represented by another lawyer when his case against Spears went to trial in 2012, but Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Suzanne Brugera dismissed the case while testimony was under way. The case was later reinstated in part by a three-justice panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal in March 2015.
The singer was not present during the first trial to fight Lutfi’s breach-of-contract claim because she was declared mentally incompetent to testify by the judge supervising her conservatorship and estate, both of which were established after the entertainer’s 2008 meltdown. She remains under the conservatorship, but she gave a deposition in preparation for the retrial that was scheduled this fall on his breach-of-contract allegation against Spears and his battery claim against her father, Jamie Spears. The Lutfi-Spears case then settled in September.
Lutfi sought hundreds of thousands of dollars based on his claim that in 2007, Spears verbally promised him 15 percent of her earnings during a specified time period. He testified during the first trial that Spears told him she made $800,000 a month even when she was not working.
