Britney Spears new attorney speaks out
A man who claims to be Britney Spears’s new attorney says that the pop star is being “deprived of her Constitutional rights” and he will seek a “return to normalcy” when it comes to Spears’s living and legal situations.
People.com reports that Jon Eardley, a lawyer with practices in Washington, DC, New York and Whittier, California filed a complaint in US District Court on behalf of Spears on Thursday last week. He lashed out against the existing conservatorship as a “violation of Spears’s civil rights,” and requested the case be moved from California state court to a federal court.
“I see the case as a civil rights case,” he sstated. “These are issues of confinement. Very serious confinement. Not allowed to contact her friends. Not allowed to use the phone. Not allowed to come and go as you please. Bodyguards controlling you and so forth.”
Since her release on the 6th of February , she has spent much of her time at her Studio City home, and when she does go out, she is usually driven by a bodyguard. In court papers, Eardley states: “She is being confined by the conservator to the private prison of her own home.”
On Friday, a Superior Court spokesperson said that the existing conservatorship and other orders “are still in effect,” and that court officials are unaware of any federal court action or scheduled hearings on the matter.
“The worst part of the legal maneuvering is it is all to Britney’s detriment,” says a legal insider. “The limited conservatorship puts in place medical care and protection of her total assets that may be put at risk by the distraction and expense of having to get such an opportunistic and counterproductive action dismissed.”
In addition, the Superior Court has found that Spears “lacks the capacity” to retain counsel of her choosing. Because of that, lawyer Adam Streisand, who went to court on February 4 to challenge the conservatorship on her behalf, removed himself himself from the case.
Eardley says he has not met the pop star, but Spears sought him out: “She reached out by phone. I have no idea how she got my number.”
The attorney says he doesn’t normally represent celebrity clients. But now Eardley has hired spokesperson Michael Sands, who until recently worked with Kevin Federline’s lawyer Mark Vincent Kaplan.
When asked if Spears’s often-erratic behavior posed a danger to herself and others, Eardley answered, “I don’t,” adding that he sees far worse cases on the streets.
“In downtown Los Angeles I’m surrounded by people talking to themselves and having fits on the street,” says Eardley. “They are out in public. They are not being institutionalised.”
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