Fame Pictures, IncBritney Spears is looking to put a more definable amount of distance between herself and her past.
The resurgent star's conservatorship obtained a temporary restraining order Friday against Spears' former manager Sam Lutfi and her onetime paparazzo boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib, both frequent companions of hers during the period she was known more for meltdowns than catchy pop melodies. (View the order.)
A hearing for is scheduled for Feb. 23 to review the matter. Britney's parents, Lynne and Jamie Spears, and her two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden, are also included under the umbrella of protection.
Ghalib and Lutfi, who hasn't been welcomed at casa Spears or anywhere else Britney can be found for some time, couldn't immediately be reached for comment. The order is also in place against attorney Jon Eardley, who early last year was enlisted by Lutfi to work on getting Britney's conservatorship overturned.
For several months last year—starting Feb. 1, when Spears was briefly commited to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for observation—Lutfi quietly abided by a temporary order that mandated he stay at least 250 yards away from her.
In July, however, sources told E! News Lutfi was unwilling to agree to a permanent stay-away. And the ambiguity of such an arrangement has apparently finally gotten to Britney.
The attempt to banish Lutfi and Ghalib from Britney's life got its second wind over the past month, according to documents filed along with the TRO request Friday. (View the declarations.)
The paperwork states that Lutfi sent text messages to Britney's hairdresser Dec. 27, asking her to pass along to the popster that he was not responsible for the situation that led to her control-relinquishing conservatorship, which has also been in place since Feb. 1 after the court found Britney to be "susceptible to undue influence."
A week later, Jamie Spears started getting instant messages from a person with an unfamiliar screen name who "made a number of utterly false and hurtful assertions concerning Mr. Spears and his family, threatening to go public with such purported 'information' unless Mr. Spears spoke with that person."
Then Lutfi started calling Britney's dad, asking if there was anything he could do to help, according to court documents.
Lutfi, who last year admitted to mashing up pills in Britney's food without her knowledge was supposedly the one behind a campaign to overturn the conservatorship, which began Feb. 1 and has since been made permanent, pending further action from Britney to dissolve it, early last year.
One of the Spears attorneys also stated in a declaration that, in multiple phone calls and texts received from Lutfi over the past month, he has claimed to have been "talking with Adnan Ghalib about the conservatorship and Ms. Spears' status as a conservatee."
As for Ghalib, it also states in the TRO petition that "Ms. Spears innocently informs Mr. Ghalib of her destinations and that he then arranges for paparazzi to meet and film her to his financial benefit."
Spears' camp is also requesting that the court order Ghalib and Lutfi to pay the conservatorship's attorneys' fees and other filing costs.
—Additional reporting by Whitney English and Claudia Rosenbaum
(Originally published Jan. 30, 2009 at 3:38 p.m. PT)