Priscilla Presley’s former business partners have filed a lawsuit seeking more than $50 million in damages, alleging fraud and breach of contract.
Brigitte Kruse and Kevin Fialko filed the lawsuit Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. Among many other allegations, they say Presley used them to financially exploit her name, image and likeness, hiding the fact that she had sold those rights decades earlier.
The lawsuit comes just over a year after Presley, the 80-year-old former wife of Elvis Presley, sued Kruse and Fialko, alleging they engaged in elder abuse in a “meticulously planned and abhorrent scheme” to “prey on an older woman by gaining her trust, isolating her from the most important people in her life, and duping her into believing that they would take care of her (personally and financially), while their real goal was to drain her of every last penny she had.”
Kruse and Fialko’s lawyer, Jordan Matthews, said in a statement Wednesday that the “evidence will establish that the real victims here are my clients, who invested millions and years of hard work into revitalizing Priscilla Presley’s brand, only to be betrayed and falsely accused once the money was on the table and every personal and business issue had been resolved.”
An email seeking comment from Presley’s lawyer was not immediately answered.
Kruse and Fialko’s lawsuit says Kruse is a well-known auctioneer and Fialko a successful entrepreneur, both of whom dealt in Elvis Presley memorabilia. The duo previously sued Priscilla Presley in Florida.
They say she approached them in 2021 looking for help to save her from financial ruin, which they spent thousands of hours working to do.
“Kruse and Fialko deployed IP, know-how and creative marketing to enhance Priscilla’s brand,” the lawsuit said, and formed several companies to exploit her name, image and likeness.
But they say as this was happening, Presley hid from them that she had sold the rights to license her name as part of a $6.5 million deal with Elvis Presley Enterprises in 2005.
The lawsuit says that when confronted about the previous agreement, Presley repeatedly denied making it, and later said she had forgotten about it when confronted with evidence of it.
The lawsuit also alleges Presley sought to take advantage of the 2023 death of her daughter and Elvis Presley’s heir, Lisa Marie Presley, to aggrandize herself and regain a stake in the Elvis’ estate.
Priscilla and Elvis Presley were married from 1967 to 1973, divorcing four years before the death of the rock ‘n’ roll legend.
Kruse and Fialko say they brokered a 2023 deal to end a legal fight over the estate between Priscilla Presley and Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter, actor Riley Keough, getting Priscilla Presley $2.4 million.
But the lawsuit says she cut them off in violation of contracts soon after, publicly smeared them and later sued them.
Priscilla Presley’s lawsuit says that Kruse and Fialko fraudulently convinced her they were essential to her recovering financially, and that her former trusted advisers had been cheating her.
It said they compelled her to take part in sham companies, lost control of her name, image and likeness, and forced her into “a form of indentured servitude.”
“By isolating her and immersing themselves in every aspect of her life, the Defendants were able to fraudulently induce Presley into giving them power of attorney, control over her family and personal trusts, and control over her bank accounts," the lawsuit said.
Priscilla became a major public figure when she was a teenager because of her relationship with one of the world's most famous men.
She never left the public eye, but she has regained a special prominence in recent years through Baz Luhrmann's 2022 film “Elvis” and Sofia Coppola's 2023 film “Priscilla,” based on her memoir.
She is also an actor who starred in the original “Naked Gun” franchise in the 1980s and 1990s, and she had a cameo in the new reboot.
FILE - Priscilla Presley attends a news conference on the Vienna Opera Ball in Vienna, Austria, Feb. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Heinz-Peter Bader, File)
