Papa's Got a Brand New Lawsuit
by Josh Grossberg
Sep 18, 2002, 2:00 PM PT
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If a new lawsuit's to be believed, James Brown, aka the hardest working man in show business, has sired the hardest working kids in show business.
Daughters Deanna Brown Thomas and Yamma Brown Lumar are suing their famous father for more than $1 million in back royalties. They say they cowrote 25 tunes with Brown, including his funky 1976 hit "Get Up Offa That Thing."
And we almost forgot--according to the suit, the daughters helped compose said music when they were just six and three years old, respectively. 
The seemingly prodigy progeny filed their suit in federal court in Atlanta, accusing Papa Brown of withholding royalty payments and seeking restitution for breach of contract, racketeering and negligence.
"There had been some undue delay for the past year in which, behind closed doors, we had fought to resolve this matter on an amicable basis with Mr. Brown's attorney. [But] they had no other recourse but to seek to get their just due monies owed to them," the daughters' attorney, Gregory Reed, tells E! Online. "They just wanted to be made whole."
While a casual fan might wonder how the 33-year-old Thomas, who works for a South Carolina radio station, and the 29-year-old Lumar, a doctor in Texas, might actually have cowritten the songs at such a tender age, Reed emphasizes that their names have been on the copyright since day one, entitling them to their fare share of the royalties.
"As a copyright owner, it's a piece of property. It doesn't matter how old you are," added Reed. "Their name shows up on the day of the selling of the copyrights, their name appears consistently from the beginning."
According to the suit, the bad blood in the Brown brood stems from his 1998 stint in a psychiatric hospital. The daughters--worried about his deteriorating condition--had daddy forcibly placed in the facility to be treated for an addiction to painkillers.
Following his discharge, Brown "vowed to the media that his daughters will never get a dime from him," court papers state. "James Brown has kept his word."
Reed says that Brown's attorney, Leon Friedman, sent a letter to the daughters a year ago offering $66,000--far from the $200,000 the two offspring were seeking for penning such tunes as "Night Train," "Body Heat" and "In the Georgia Disco."
At one point, Reed says, Brown also offered $198,000 to Thomas and Lumar in exchange for them giving up their share of the copyright, but they turned him down.
The lawsuit notes that Brown has been feeling good enough to pay his ex-wife, Diedre Jenkins, who also owns a stake in the copyright, but when it comes to his own kids, it's strictly a man's world.
But, adds Reed, perhaps the good news is that both father and daughters have been able to separate business from family.
"It's been cordial. They speak all the time. It's just that he indicated it was going to be taken care, but it's been more than a year," the lawyer says.
Brown's attorney, meanwhile, had no comment on the lawsuit.
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