Whitney Houston is being sued by her father's talent-management company, John Houston Entertainment, for $100 million in a breach-of-contract dispute, MTV News reports.
John Houston Entertainment filed the suit Aug. 30 in New Jersey Superior Court, accusing Whitney, 39, of failing to pay her share for services rendered in 2000 at a time when the company acted as her manager.
According to the legal papers, among the situations John Houston Entertainment managed were those related to Whitney's drug bust in Hawaii in January 2000, when an airport search of her handbag revealed half an ounce of marijuana. (The charge was later dismissed after she paid $1,000 to the state and a $25 "criminal injury" fee, as well as a $3,000 donation to an anti-drug group. She was also ordered to submit a substance-abuse assessment to authorities.)
The suit also shows that John Houston Entertainment -- which admits to taking a 20 percent cut rather than the industry-standard 10 percent -- takes credit for Whitney's lucrative $100-million contract that she signed with Arista Records last summer.
According to Sonia Johnson, a spokeswoman for John Houston (the father, not the company), the elder Houston says: "I am stating for the record that I am 100 percent behind the lawsuit against my daughter Whitney and am ashamed at (sic) my daughter's staff ... because they want to weasel out of paying my company."
Houston's statement goes on to say, "I will not rest until this is over, and I plan to see it through to the end."
Whitney Houston's publicist, Nancy Seltzer, tells MTV, however: "When I spoke to John a week and a half ago, he said, 'It's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. I couldn't do anything like that, and I didn't.' I asked him if he wanted that to be his statement, and he said, 'Yes.'"
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