Britney Spears’ father has been in control of her personal and business affairs as her conservator for more than a decade — and now a renewed effort by fans to #FreeBritney has sparked a defamation complaint.
Jamie Spears was appointed Britney’s conservator in 2008, and says from time to time groups have made false statements and questioned whether the arrangement was in the singer’s best interest. But this time, he’s taking legal action.
According to the complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Larry Stein and Ashley Yeargan of Russ August & Kabat, a blogger named Anthony Elia has “been one of the loudest voices in that crowd.”
Jamie Spears claims Elia has made it his mission to ensure Britney’s conservatorship ends without any information about the reality of the situation.
Elia alleged in a June 14 blog post that Britney’s team was deleting positive comments on her Instagram page to make sure negative comments got more attention and described it as “a human rights violation.” His claims were picked up by MSN, Us Weekly, In Touch, Perez Hilton and others, according to the complaint. In addition to the blog post, Elia also posted several tweets and retweets spreading the allegations. The next day, he posted that the negative comments were gone and the positive comments reappeared. Spears’ lawyers argue that nothing was deleted in the first place and that it’s actually impossible to re-post deleted comments on Instagram.
