The five siblings formally filed a response calling Jeanie Buss's petition legally and factually baseless.
The Buss family fight over the Lakers escalated this week. Johnny, James, Janie, Joey and Jesse Buss filed a formal response Wednesday opposing their sister Jeanie's petition to block them from selling the family's remaining 17.8% stake in the team.
Jeanie Buss filed her petition on Aug. 23, after Mark Walter struck a deal with Joshua Kushner that valued the Lakers at $12.5 billion. She argued a 2017 court order requires the family to "take all actions reasonably available" to keep her as the team's governor, a role she negotiated as part of Walter's purchase of the Lakers last year. She maintains her siblings cannot compel the family trust to sell without her consent.
Her siblings disagree. In their filing, they call her argument "at most a meaningless academic exercise" and say she has no legal right to stop the sale of shares held in the family trust.
The dispute now heads deeper into the courts, with both sides staking out opposing reads of the 2017 order and what it actually requires of the family going forward.