On December 7, Rupert formally submitted his petition to strip Prue, Liz and James from their voting power. The three children quickly submitted an objection and claimed that their father abused the scary amendment that enables him to make changes to the family business. Although the public was still not aware of the escalating unrest that the family cruel, the legal battle was now underway.
Since leaving the family empire, James had become a private investor, media companies, AI-startups and a company for cannabis-and-use operations. He was also a board member at Tesla and hired one of the law firms of the automaker, the heavy Cravath Swaine & Moore, to represent him and his sisters. Strategically, time was on their side; They just had to tie things long enough to maintain the existing structure. As Angelo James said, the directors of his father would 'ottom' for the trust as soon as he was dead. “If the new managers are not made, he cannot give a name from outside the grave.”
Rupert brought on board his own controversial procedure, Adam Streisand, a specialist in successive fights who had protected Jeanie Buss's control over the Los Angeles Lakers in the light of an attempted coup. In June, in the midst of the flurry of depositions, summons and legal instructions, Rupert, now 93, his fifth wife, a 67-year-old retired molecular biologist, Elena Zhukova, in his vineyard in the hills of Bel Air. Lachlan and Barr were both present, but Prue and Liz sent their sorry. Liz would later say that it would have been “too painful” to be there. James would say he was not invited.
The case fell under the jurisdiction of the Probate Commissioner for Washoe County, Nev., Edmund J. Gorman Jr. He placed the case under such a tight seal that it did not even appear under the anonymized name – “in the issue of do 1 trust” – on the District Court. After revising the early letter, Gorman ruled that Rupert the right To change this, he would first have to prove that the change was applied in good faith and for the “only benefit” and he should do that during the process in September.
At the end of July, the public learned for the first time about the legal battle for the Murdoch Family Trust when we received a copy of Gorman's opinion and reported on the broad contours of the case. After our article was published, Times legal adviser led a lawsuit to open the legal proceedings for the media, with the argument that the struggle for the future of the Murdoch -Rijk is a matter of general interest. The outcome could very well determine the future of two listed companies of millions of dollars, not to mention that many millions of media consumers are influenced and reform the American political landscape. A district judge rejected the request and ruled that Rupert had set his action in the courts of Nevada due to the expectation that it would remain confidential.
