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For 13 years, nine months and 12 days, Britney Spears languished in a conservatorship as the whole world watched. Despite her legion of fans across the globe demanding for more than a decade that the court #FreeBritney, nothing changed — until everything did.
On June 23, Spears appeared remotely before L.A. County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny and broke her public silence in a fiery, emotional speech. “It’s embarrassing and demoralizing what I’ve been through, and that’s the main reason I’ve never said it openly,” said Spears, describing the conservatorship as abusive and asking the court to let her pick her own lawyer. “It’s my wish and my dream for all of this to end.”
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Within weeks, she’d have for the first time an attorney of her choosing advocating for her: Greenberg Traurig partner Mathew Rosengart. Less than four months later, the conservatorship was terminated. Spears was free. Rosengart, a corporate litigator and former Department of Justice trial attorney, was no stranger to high-profile cases, having represented the likes of Sean Penn and Winona Ryder — but he also wasn’t a probate lawyer. So why did he want to take on a contentious case that seemed, on the surface at least, to be outside his wheelhouse?
“I was concerned, even before getting involved, about why this woman appeared to have some of her fundamental rights and civil liberties stripped away,” Rosengart tells THR. “As a former federal prosecutor, I had experience with criminal defendants who were charged with committing heinous crimes, and they had the right to choose their own counsel, yet Britney did not have that right.”
In addition to the civil liberties issues, Rosengart says Spears’ June 23 testimony struck a chord: He heard the voice of a woman who had been bullied. “I’ve always detested bullying, even growing up,” he says. “Bullying a woman is even more unacceptable and abhorrent. It was troubling to me both personally and professionally, and I felt I could help stop it, as a lawyer and otherwise. That’s a pledge I made, and it was really rewarding to be able to help.”
It builds on lessons he learned while working at the DOJ. “You wear the white hat and do the right thing no matter what the right thing is,” says Rosengart. “The quote from Justice Sutherland in Berger v. U.S. about the responsibility of a prosecutor to be a servant of the law — ‘Guilt shall not escape nor innocence suffer’ — has always been a guidepost in terms of how I’ve litigated.”
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In his first statements as Spears’ attorney, Rosengart promised to act “aggressively and expeditiously” to remove her father, Jamie Spears, as conservator of the estate. Less than two weeks later, he formally filed a petition to do so. The move was met with some skepticism — including a “surreal” moment during which Rosengart recalls watching CNN pundits question why he wasn’t immediately trying to terminate the conservatorship entirely.
“It was strategic,” says Rosengart. “I knew we’d be able to get a much faster hearing if we tried to bifurcate this — first moving to suspend the father and removing that impediment on the way to termination.”
He also was thinking a few moves ahead. Rosengart suspected that Jamie’s lawyers “wanted to avoid the stigma of their client being suspended” and also realized that if Jamie were removed, he’d have to turn over attorney-client privileged documents belonging to the estate. Not only did Jamie contest the suspension, but he also petitioned to end the conservatorship entirely. After Jamie was suspended Sept. 29 — and officially on record in support of termination — Rosengart “knew that the wind was at our backs.”
“One of the best days I had in the case was when I was able to call Britney on Sept. 29 right after the hearing,” Rosengart recalls. “She was away at the time, and I told her she’d be able to wake up the next morning — for the first time in 13 years — without her father being conservator of the estate. That was what she wanted, and she was elated.”
Her fans were, too. Rosengart isn’t on social media, but plenty of friends sent him memes and tweets to make sure he was aware of his new nicknames, including Rosengod and Rosenzaddy. “I had to look up ‘zaddy,’” Rosengart laughs. “All of that was humbling and embarrassing. You can’t ignore the media aspects of it but, if anything, it forced me to focus and not get distracted by the attention.”
Since breaking her silence, Britney has been directly sharing her feelings about the conservatorship and those connected to it with her fans via social media. She has indicated that she’s not done fighting and intends to sue several people connected to the conservatorship. But even if she decides not to go down that path, the probate matter still has some big-ticket loose ends.
“We are still looking at everything, including following the money,” says Rosengart. On July 27, he’ll be back in court to address outstanding accounting issues and Jamie Spears’ application to have Britney pay his ongoing legal fees. That’s “on top of more than $6 million he took in fees and commissions over the years and many millions more paid by the estate to his lawyers,” notes Rosengart, who clearly hasn’t taken his foot off the gas. “Their application is not only legally meritless; under the circumstances, I believe it is also morally abominable.”
The impact of the termination has been widespread, and Rosengart says it’s all due to his client: “Britney gets the credit. She shined a light not only on her own conservatorship, but on conservatorships and guardianships in general, and it opened my eyes. I cannot think of another issue in these incredibly polemical times that has drawn the far right, the far left and everyone in between together. The U.S. Congress is examining what happened here in a completely nonpartisan way.”
Advocates are calling for major change on behalf of people in unwanted conservatorships who don’t have the reach and influence of a global superstar; members of Congress have asked Spears and Rosengart to testify about their experience; and the federal “Free Britney Act” is pending, while California lawmakers already have passed legislation designed to protect conservatees’ rights.
“I’m still processing what happened, and I will be for the foreseeable future,” says Rosengart. “It’s been an incredibly arduous yet exciting journey. When I walked out of the courthouse on July 14, at that point in time I wasn’t sure if we would be able to achieve what in other circumstances could have taken years in just a period of months. Our strategic decisions, and aggressive employment of those decisions, as well as Britney’s own steadfastness and fierce advocacy, were all contributors.”
It was a letter from former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter that really brought things home for Rosengart. His first job after graduating from Boston College Law School in 1987 was clerking for Souter in New Hampshire Supreme Court, and they’ve remained close over the years. “He has literally thousands of books in his home, but he doesn’t watch TV and knows very little about pop culture,” says Rosengart. “Just as he had no idea who Sean Penn was when I introduced them at my wedding, he also was unfamiliar with Britney.”
Which made the feedback from Souter, who in a letter of recommendation dating back to 1988 praised Rosengart’s instinct, intelligence and integrity, even more compelling. A few weeks after winning the case, he received a message from Souter “expressing his pride in the professionalism with which he thought I had conducted myself and how I stood up for my client,” says Rosengart. “It meant the world to me and brought everything full circle.”
As for Spears herself, with the conservatorship no longer controlling her, she has teased new music on social media and in February she inked a book deal with Simon & Schuster reportedly worth $15 million. Beyond that? Rosengart circles back to what he said on the courthouse steps in November. “What’s next for Britney — and this is the first time that this could be said for about a decade — is up to one person: Britney.”
A version of this story first appeared in the March 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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