Judge sends the Cascio siblings' case against Michael Jackson's estate to arbitration

A Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that a child sexual abuse lawsuit against the estate of pop star Michael Jackson must go to confidential arbitration rather than a public trial. Judge Hernan D. Vera found that a 2019 settlement signed by four of Jackson's Cascio siblings, Edward, Dominic, Marie-Nicole and Aldo, binds them to arbitration. "Although the allegations are horrific," Vera wrote, "the court is without discretion to do aught but enforce the language of the arbitration clause."

The Cascio siblings grew up around Jackson, whose father worked as a hotel general manager where the star often stayed, and the family once described themselves as his second family, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010 to defend him against separate abuse claims. Their new allegations claim Jackson trafficked and abused them as children beginning in the late 1980s and continuing until shortly before his 2009 death.

The siblings say it was the 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, in which James Safechuck and Wade Robson made their own abuse allegations against Jackson, that changed how they saw their relationship with him. That same year the Cascios reached a settlement with the estate worth roughly $16 million, paid over five years, without any admission of wrongdoing. The deal required them to sign a confidentiality and arbitration agreement, which their new suit calls an attempt to silence abuse victims and now argues was signed under coercion.

The Cascios' lawyer, Howard King, called the ruling disappointing but not surprising, and said the family had hoped for a public trial rather than a private arbitration room. The estate's attorney, Martin Singer, called the lawsuit a desperate money grab and pointed to the family's decades of public support for Jackson, including their 2010 appearance defending him on television.

The eldest Cascio sibling, Frank, was sent to arbitration on his own related claim by a different judge in March, under the same settlement clause. A separate case against the estate, brought by Leaving Neverland's Safechuck and Robson, is set for its own trial in November after being revived in 2023. The estate is also still dealing with a Michael biopic sequel that Lionsgate has already targeted for late 2027.