Jeanie Buss is contesting the validity of her five siblings’ vote to sell the family’s shares in the Los Angeles Lakers.
Buss filed a petition with the Los Angeles Superior Court, asking a judge to prevent her siblings from selling the family’s remaining 17.8% interest in the Lakers to a group led by Bob Iger and Josh Kushner. She also accuses her siblings of secretly conspiring to remove her as the team’s governor, a position she has held since the death of her father Jerry Buss in 2013.
Jeanie Buss argues in her 97-page-long petition that it is in the best interest of the Buss family trust to “retain an interest sufficient to maintain control and to benefit from the continuously skyrocketing value.”
Additionally, she is trying to remove her siblings, Janie and Joey, as co-trustees of the family trust because of a breach of fiduciary duty. She also stated that Ed Roski and Dr. Patrick Soon Shiong, minority owners of the Lakers, have agreed to keep their shares of the team.
The siblings claim they needed only two of the three co-trustees and four of the six siblings to vote to sell the trust’s shares. ESPN reports that Buss’ lawyer, Adam Streisand, called that vote “devious behavior” and said it was “orchestrated as part of a calculated effort to create a public fait accompli before Jeanie could respond.”
“In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, ‘It’s like deja vu all over again,'” the court filing begins. “Jeanie comes now, unfortunately having once again been forced to seek relief to enforce her parents’ intent and the clear, unequivocal and immutable terms of [the family trust] and this Court’s [2017] Order on Petition for Instructions to Co-Trustees Concerning Appointment of Controlling Owner of the Los Angeles Lakers.”
The filing added, “Jeanie thought she had put all of her siblings’ scheming and manipulations behind her in 2017. Sadly, that was not the case, and Jeanie must respectfully request relief from this Court a second time.”
Two of the Buss siblings have already bought into the San Diego Padres
Two of Jeanie Buss’s brothers, Joey and Jesse Buss, announced on Wednesday that they have joined Kwanza Jones and Jose E. Feliciano’s new San Diego Padres ownership group. The siblings created the Buss Sports Capital investment firm after their family sold its majority stake in the Lakers.
“Joey and I had the privilege of learning from our father and then spending nearly two decades building our own careers in professional basketball operations,” ESPN reports Jesse Buss said in a statement. “We saw firsthand what it takes to build a championship organization, and throughout our careers have applied those lessons across talent evaluation, roster construction, player development and long-term organizational planning. While every sport is different, we believe the principles behind building sustained success are universal.”