As testimony opens today in a civil suit Britney Spears' ex-manager has filed against the singer and her family, an attorney for Spears' father revealed last Friday that Jamie Spears feared for his daughter's life during her 2007 breakdown, Reuters reports. Leon Gladstone, an attorney for Jamie Spears, told the jury that his client "was living in constant fear that he was going to look at the TV one day and see Britney was dead."
Gladstone also said that Jamie Spears had attempted to get his daughter in rehab following her 2006 divorce from Kevin Federline, and even convinced Federline at one point to seek sole legal custody of their two children. Gladstone said the singer's behavior changed after splitting with Justin Timberlake in 2003, and that her father had visited her at a Los Angeles hospital in 2007 to find her screaming and strapped to a gurney. "He is scared to death and he's thinking to himself, 'My daughter has lost everything,'" said Gladstone. "'Here she is, in a psychiatric ward, out of her head.'"
Spears' 2007 meltdown led to two psychiatric holds, the loss of custody of her children and a court-ordered conservatorship. Lufti has accused Spears of drug use and is seeking millions from her family. Spears herself is unlikely to make a court appearance; she is still under a conservatorship, and her supervising judge has ordered her not to appear for trial or a deposition.
