Leisure mogul and famend artwork collector David Geffen was sued on Tuesday morning by his estranged husband, mannequin Donovan Michaels, for alleged breach of contract, Selection reported earlier this week.
The go well with was filed in Los Angeles Superior Courtroom and accuses Geffen, who initiated divorce proceedings, of treating his former accomplice as “a dwelling social experiment — a trophy to point out off to his rich pals, below the guise of benevolence.”
The 33-page grievance compares their nine-year relationship, together with two years of marriage, to the rag-to-riches plot of “Buying and selling Locations,” with a “younger susceptible black man, orphaned as a toddler” invited into the world of “an exploiter, masquerading as a white knight whereas hiding behind wealth, philanthropy and fame.” Based on Forbes, Geffen, 82, is value $9 billion.
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Michaels, who Selection notes was positioned within the foster care system at 18 months, is 32. In his go well with, Michaels claims Geffen promised him “lifelong” monetary assist however then “reduce him off” and evicted him shortly after submitting for divorce.
The lawsuit additionally claims Michaels met Geffen in 2016 by means of SeekingArrangements.com, a web site “the place males like Geffen store for the susceptible,” the grievance states. The grievance provides: “Geffen realized of Michaels’ troubled previous — his historical past of neglect, poverty, instability, and authorized entanglements. Moderately than reply with empathy or supply real assist, Geffen noticed Michaels as an object of exploitation: a younger, engaging and homosexual black man whose trauma could possibly be weaponized for Geffen’s private gratification and public picture.”
Patricia Glaser, authorized illustration for Geffen, known as the lawsuit in a press release to Selection “pathetic.” “There was and is not any contract — specific, written or implied — that has ever existed,” she tells Selection. “We will probably be vigorously and righteously defending towards this false and pathetic lawsuit.”
Geffen wields monumental affect in Hollywood and the larger artwork world, as a adorned patron of a few of the nation’s most influential cultural establishments: He donated $100 million to Lincoln Heart in 2015 and one other $100 million to the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York in 2016. In 2017 he promised $150 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork, which stands as the biggest reward within the museum’s historical past. The multibillionaire can be a daily member of the ARTnews Prime 200 Collectors listing, and has a group reportedly valued at $2 billion and wealthy with works by postwar masters together with Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
Extra not too long ago, his artwork dealings have ensnared Geffen in a really completely different form of authorized dispute: A he said-he stated begun by crypto billionaire Justin Solar, who in February known as on Geffen to return an Alberto Giacometti sculpture that Solar says was stolen from his assortment by an worker and offered as a part of an elaborate fraud. Solar bought the bronze, metal, and iron Giacometti, titled Le Nez (1949–65), at a Sotheby’s public sale of works from the Macklowe assortment in November 2021 for $78.4 million, working with the help of his former artwork adviser, Sydney Xiong, who’s accused of exchanging Le Nez for 2 unidentified work from Geffen’s assortment, reportedly value $55 million, and a further $10.5 million in money.
Solar, who is predicated in Hong Kong, filed his go well with in February in New York, the place the sculpture is situated. The next April, Geffen hit again with a scathing 100-page countersuit which, in lots of phrases, described Solar’s case as a “sham.”
