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High Court Passes on James Brown Sex Appeal

Mon., Apr. 2, 2007 6:25 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

The sex machine has ground to a halt.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to review the sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by a former publicist of James Brown who claims the late entertainer raped her at gunpoint in 1988 while she was working for him.

Jacque Hollander petitioned the high court in November to take up her cause after a federal appeals court upheld a judge's decision to dismiss the suit in 2005, saying she had waited too long to sue. The statute of limitations on a case such as Hollander's is two years, meaning she would have had to file back in 1990, instead of in 2005 when she actually filed her complaint.

Hollander's attorney, Donald Rosen, had argued that his client was diagnosed with a thyroid condition in 2000 that she learned in 2003 was linked to the stress she had suffered as a result of the 1988 assault. Because the cause-and-effect hadn't been established until 2003, Hollander was well within her right to begin legal proceedings, Rosen said.

Hollander was seeking $106 million in damages from Brown, who died Dec. 25 at age 73, thereby closing the book on a history of violent run-ins with several of the women in his life and opening up a whole other can of legal worms for his various survivors.

The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz was temporarily laid to rest last month in a crypt at the Beech Island, South Carolina, home of one of his grown daughters while his estate's legal team continues to hammer out the details that would allow him to be buried near his own residence, where his heirs are looking to open a Graceland-style memorial.

Meanwhile, his romantic partner in his later years, Tomi Rae Hynie, sued in February for 50 percent of Brown's estate after she and her five-year-old son, James Brown Jr., were left out of the singer's will.

On the other side of the coin, Brown's six grown children who were mentioned in the will tried to get Brown's longtime attorney and two other trustees removed as executors of their father's estate, claiming there was a conflict of interest that was preventing the men from impartially carrying out their duties.

A South Carolina judge has since appointed a special administrator to oversee the handling of Brown's assets but the original trustees remain in place.