Casey Kasem’s Wrongful Death Lawsuit Has Finally Been Settled
For the past five years since his death, Casey Kasem’s family has been fighting over everything from money to who was responsible for his passing. TMZ now says that while Casey’s widow and kids still hate each other, they’ve finally stopped fighting over who caused his death.
After Casey was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, his second wife, Jean Kasem (the living Jennifer Coolidge character above), moved him to a friend’s house in Washington state. She also prevented anyone from seeing Casey, including his children from his first marriage: Julie, Mike and Kerri Kasem. Kerri got the authorities involved and was granted the right to see her dad once a day and take him to the hospital if she suspected anything was up. Once she got to see her dad, she was told he had bedsores and an infection in his lungs. She called an ambulance, and Jean responded by throwing raw hamburger meat at Kerri. It was also tense because Kerri is a Scientologist and Jean is not.
After Casey died, his body went missing. The Kasem Kids (which totally sounds like a Scooby-Doo spin-off narrated by Casey) accused Jean of elder abuse, and believed she was trying to bury their dad’s body in another country to avoid a proper investigation. Casey was eventually buried in Norway. Julie, Mike, and Kerri filed an elder abuse lawsuit against Jean. They claimed that Jean removed Casey from his assisted living facility in California with the purpose of deteriorating his health.
Jean swiped back, accusing the kids of secretly murdering their father in the name of Scientology (Kerri’s the only Scientologist in the family). Julie accused Jean of dragging Scientology into it as a way to deflect from her own guilt. Jean fired back that the kids were just in it for the money. The kids were cleared of any wrongdoing last year. Jean was also cleared of elder abuse charges.
With both sides being cleared of nefarious soap opera-level death plotting, all that remained was a fight over money. But they’re over that too for now. The Kasem Kids recently moved to end their lawsuit. The kids filed a request for dismissal, and a court signed off on the decision this week. Sources say that both sides have settled. The only problem is, Kerri reportedly didn’t want to. Sources close to Kerri claim that she believes Julie, Mike, and their lawyers forced her to settle the lawsuit, and that she’s “distraught and heartbroken” over the outcome. Continuing to hold the Number 1 spot on the chart of family messiness for 260 weeks in a row: The Kasem Family.
Jean hasn’t said how she feels about settling the lawsuit, but she’s probably glad it’s over. At least two of Casey’s kids sound like they’re glad to be done with this lawsuit. There’s a chance that the only person still pissed off is Kerri Kasem. And that’s got to be really confusing for Kerri. On the one hand, it’s very on-brand for a Scientologist to hate their family. But on the other, it’s a time-honored tradition for siblings to put aside their differences and join together into one super-mega-sibling that does everything in their power to defeat their evil stepmother.
Pic: Wenn.com