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 swimsuit 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 buddies, below the guise of benevolence.”
The 33-page criticism 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 weak 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.” In accordance with Forbes, Geffen, 82, is price $9 billion.
Michaels, who Selection notes was positioned within the foster care system at 18 months, is 32. In his swimsuit, Michaels claims Geffen promised him “lifelong” monetary help however then “minimize him off” and evicted him shortly after submitting for divorce.
The lawsuit additionally claims Michaels met Geffen in 2016 by SeekingArrangements.com, an internet site “the place males like Geffen store for the weak,” the criticism states. The criticism provides: “Geffen realized of Michaels’ troubled previous — his historical past of neglect, poverty, instability, and authorized entanglements. Reasonably than reply with empathy or provide real help, Geffen noticed Michaels as an object of exploitation: a younger, enticing 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 in opposition to this false and pathetic lawsuit.”
Geffen wields huge affect in Hollywood and the larger artwork world, as a embellished patron of a few of the nation’s most influential cultural establishments: He donated $100 million to Lincoln Middle 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 most important present within the museum’s historical past. The multibillionaire can be a daily member of the ARTnews Prime 200 Collectors record, 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 totally different kind of authorized dispute: A he said-he mentioned 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 price $55 million, and an extra $10.5 million in money.
Solar, who is predicated in Hong Kong, filed his swimsuit in February in New York, the place the sculpture is positioned. The next April, Geffen hit again with a scathing 100-page countersuit which, in lots of phrases, described Solar’s case as a “sham.”
