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Katy Perry will take the stand in a future California state court trial as part of her latest legal battle with an octogenarian over real estate, a judge ordered on Friday, despite her lawyers’ attempts to keep her from testifying.
The “Roar” singer will testify for an hour in Los Angeles Superior Court on damages, Judge Joseph Lipner ordered. But that hearing will be separate from an ongoing current trial on the contract’s validity, according to a Friday minute order.
The parties are in California state court over ownership of the eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom estate that Perry and her partner Orlando Bloom purchased for $15 million from Carl Westcott, a serial entrepreneur and founder of 1-800-Flowers, in 2020. Westcott’s lawyers said the 1-800-Flowers founder, who was 80 years old at the time, couldn’t contest to the contract with the pop star’s agent, Bernie Gudvi, in July 2020 in part due to intoxication from prescribed opiates.
Westcott’s lawyers pressed hard for the pop star to testify on damages in briefs leading up to the order, which they said Perry’s lawyers agreed to in an Aug. 10 email. Controlling statute calls for the agreement to be enforced “regardless of how famous Katy Perry is,” they said in a request filed Thursday.
Perry’s lawyers argued that Westcott’s lawyers formally served the subpoena too late, on the first day of the five-day-trial, and that testimony about the availability or amount of rental value should come from a real estate expert, not from Perry.
The request for “admittedly irrelevant testimony” is designed to “turn this trial into a media circus,” Perry’s lawyers said in a brief submitted Thursday.
Westcott is asking for to cancelthe contract and for lawyers fees. In addition to the property, Perry is asking for lawyers fees, $2.7 million to cover the cost of a similar rental in the area and $3.21 million in damages for lost rent that the “California Gurls” singer would have earned from the house had the sale gone to plan.
A trial over damages has not yet been scheduled.
Gordon Kemper LLP is representing Westcott. Greenberg Traurig LLP is representing Perry’s agent, Gudvi.
The case is Westcott v. Gudvi, Cal. Super. Ct., No. 20STCV29664, 9/29/23.
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