Michael Jackson’s dermatologist is fighting an anti-SLAPP motion to keep his lawsuit going against a plastic surgeon he says defamed him for suggesting that he was instrumental in providing the medication that killed the singer. -db
February 2, 2010
By Wire Services
A dermatologist who alleges a plastic surgeon defamed him by publicly implying that he had a hand in the late Michael Jackson’s death is rebutting an attempt to have his lawsuit dismissed.
Lawyers for Drs. Arnold Klein and Steven Hoefflin will square off in Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb. 11 because the plastic surgeon’s attorneys have filed an anti-SLAPP — Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation — motion in a bid to have the case thrown out.
“It is not clear to me why Dr. Hoefflin holds the malice for me that he manifested by stating publicly that I was instrumental in providing the medication that caused Michael Jackson’s death,” Klein states in his sworn declaration filed last Friday.
Klein’s lawsuit against Hoefflin, filed Sept. 14 in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges slander, trade libel, false light, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress and unfair competition.
Klein contends Hoefflin made statements in a newspaper interview hinting that Klein may be implicated in Jackson’s death. According to the lawsuit, Hoefflin told a reporter for the British tabloid The Sun on Aug. 26 that Jackson’s personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, would have asked Klein to tell him how to administer propofol and would have counted on him to be his source of the drug and to guide him in its use.
Klein says anyone reading the statements “would erroneously believe that Dr. Klein was implicated in the homicidal death of Michael Jackson, either as the source of the lethal propofol and/or as the guide to whoever was responsible for the lethal propofol treatment of Michael Jackson.”
In court papers filed Oct. 30 seeking dismissal of Klein’s suit, Hoefflin maintains that he spoke out on a matter of public interest and therefore what he said is protected speech.
But in his declaration, Klein says he never met or spoke to Murray, nor did he provide the doctor with propofol or with instructions on how to administer it.
“On the day Michael Jackson died I was working with patients,” Klein says. “I received no telephone calls that day from Conrad Murray or from anyone claiming to act on his behalf.”
Klein states he and Hoefflin occasionally worked together in the past, but no longer do so and are now competitors.
Jackson died June 25 at age 50. The coroner’s office ruled that his death was a homicide and that it was caused by “acute propofol intoxication.”
Murray, who administered propofol to Jackson at his rented Holmby Hills estate on the morning of his death, is under investigation but has not been arrested or charged in connection with the singer’s death.
Hoefflin claimed after Jackson’s death that he was an authorized spokesman for the singer’s mother, Katherine Jackson, and that he also was working on a book with her, even though her lawyers said she did not give the physician permission to speak on her behalf, according to Klein’s suit.
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