Atlanta News 12:45 p.m. Saturday, October 10, 2009

King siblings to meet in court

The children of Martin Luther King Jr. are to meet in court Monday for the next chapter in a family financial fight that friends say threatens to soil their father’s legacy.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville has tried to encourage an out-of-court settlement of what is, at its core, a feud over the company that controls King’s legacy and an estate worth millions of dollars. He has appointed an auditor to investigate the dispute.

Barring a settlement, jury selection will begin in a suit filed against Dexter King by his two siblings.

The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a King family intimate, said he remains hopeful the family can resolve the dispute without a protracted public court fight.

“People are hurt and saddened to see Martin’s children at each other’s throats instead of finding a way to resolve their differences through love and nonviolence,” he said. “They owe it to their family legacy not to foul it up with fights, bitter court fights and that sort of thing. It is contrary to what the King legacy is all about.”

Bernice, 46, and Martin Luther King III, 51, say they have sued their 48-year-old brother Dexter in part to protect that legacy. They have demanded he hold a board meeting of King Inc., the corporation that he heads and that controls the use of their father’s papers, intellectual property and materials. The last formal board meeting occurred before their mother, Coretta Scott King, died in January 2006. Dexter’s lawyers say there also were meetings by telephone.

The three siblings are the only board members. Lawyers for Dexter and King Inc. say the only purpose of a board meeting would be for Bernice and Martin to remove their brother as president and CEO of the corporation and take control.

“If their only goal is to have a coup at the corporation because of their personal feelings about Dexter, that is no way to run a corporation,” said Lin Wood, an attorney for King Inc. “The question now is whether the children want to come together and act in the best interest of the corporation. At this time, I’m not sure three siblings can make that decision. There has been so much acrimony. ... There is no trust on either side.”

Wood said King Inc. needs a custodian to run the corporation in its best financial interest — an offer he said Dexter has made to his siblings to resolve the litigation. If King Inc. doesn’t survive the battle, all the siblings stand to lose financially and will have more trouble protecting their father’s legacy and the use of his works, Wood said.

Attempts to reach Jock Smith, an attorney for Bernice and Martin, were unsuccessful.

Former King associate Lynn Cothren said King Inc.’s future should be decided by the three siblings.

“If Dexter knows they want to call the meeting in order to fire him, I guess what he needs to do is call the meeting,” said Cothren, a longtime special assistant to Coretta Scott King for 23 years. “If you’re going to be voted down, then you need to take it like a man, and if you don’t have the confidence of the other shareholders, then you need to step down.

“That is the way any corporation is run.”

The siblings’ yearslong feud burst into public view when Bernice and Martin filed a lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court in July 2008. They accused Dexter of mishandling funds from King Inc., improperly taking money from the estate of their mother and acting unilaterally regarding both parents’ estates without their permission or knowledge.

The fight involves division of money from the $32 million payday for an archive of their father’s papers; the claim that Dexter misappropriated money from his mother’s estate; resistance from Martin and Bernice to a $1.4 million book deal for their mother’s autobiography and to a Dreamworks movie deal on their father’s life negotiated by Dexter. In April, Dexter’s two siblings complained they were unaware of an $800,000 licensing deal reportedly to benefit the King Center that he brokered with a foundation that is raising money for a King memorial on the National Mall.

Dexter countersued and sought to force Bernice to provide love letters between his parents that were crucial for the autobiography.

Dexter has prevailed in most court hearings to this point, Wood said. Glanville has ordered Bernice and Martin King to pay part of Dexter’s legal fees because they “have unnecessarily expanded and protracted the proceedings.” According to Wood, the judge has indicated he intends to dismiss the claim that Dexter misappropriated money from his mother’s estate if the case goes to trial.

For years, Dexter ran the family business “as his mother wanted” with little interference from his siblings and with the support of the eldest child, Yolanda, who died at age 51 in 2007, Wood said. But after she died, Martin and Bernice more aggressively questioned their brother’s judgment.

One legal problem for the siblings is that the bylaws of the corporation require 80 percent of the directors to be present at a board meeting for a vote to be taken. With only three of the original five members now alive, that means no substantive meeting can take place if one of the directors doesn’t attend. Dexter’s siblings say that allows him to maintain control.

“Mrs. King, it seems to me, wanted to give Dexter some extraordinary edge and that is what created the problem,” Lowery said. “He has more than his share of power and authority. They all got to give a little to work it out.”