Britney Spears’ lawyer dismisses ‘overblown’ battery allegation as ‘sensational tabloid fodder’
Britney Spears. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
A district attorney is deciding whether or not to prosecute Britney Spears after she was accused of misdemeanour battery.
The news comes just weeks after Spears was accused of slapping a phone out of a housekeeper’s hand during an alleged altercation that happened at her California home.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office subsequently confirmed that it was investigating Britney Spears after the housekeeper accused her of misdemeanour battery. In California, the offence refers to intentional and unlawful physical contact with another person.
The sheriff’s office has now concluded its investigation and the matter was passed along to the area’s district attorney on Friday (27 August), according to PEOPLE.
The district attorney will now decide whether to prosecute the singer for misdemeanour battery.
In a statement released earlier this month, Spears’ lawyer Mathew Rosengart said the alleged altercation at the singer’s home had been “overblown” by the media, adding that it was “sensational tabloid fodder”.
Rosengart insisted that the incident was “nothing more than a manufactured ‘he said she said’ regarding a cellphone”.
He added that there was “no striking and obviously no injury whatsoever”.
“Anyone can make an accusation, but this should have been closed immediately,” he said.
“To its credit, the sheriff’s office itself has acknowledge that the incident was classified as a ‘very minor misdemeanour…’ and confirmed ‘there were no injuries.'”
Britney Spears ‘didn’t hit anyone’, according to inside source
Meanwhile, a source close to Spears told PEOPLE that the investigation into Spears would have been dropped by now if it didn’t concern the singer.
The inside source insisted that the battery allegation was fabricated, adding that she “didn’t hit anyone”.
“The housekeeper was holding her phone and Britney tried to knock it out of her hands,” the source said.
The furore comes just weeks after Spears hired Rosengart as her new attorney after her court-appointed counsel, Samuel Ingham III, resigned.
The singer had previously been denied the opportunity to hand-pick her own lawyer when she was put under a conservatorship in 2008.
But that all changed in June when she spoke out publicly against her court-ordered conservatorship for the first time during a virtual court appearance.
During that hearing, Spears characterised her conservatorship as “abusive” and claimed she had been denied the right to marry her boyfriend Sam Asghari and start a family with him.
Shortly afterwards, Spears was granted permission to hire her own lawyer for the first time, leading to her hiring Mathew Rosengart.
He has promised to “aggressively” move to have her now estranged father Jamie Spears removed from the complex legal arrangement.
Jamie Spears has signalled that he will step down from his daughter’s conservatorship, but he has not yet given a timeline for his departure.
