Katy Perry is facing a fiery courtroom with the family of a dying veteran who was forced to surrender his Montecito mansion to her in a years-long estate dispute, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Ailing Carl Westcott, 84, agreed to sell his eight-bed home to Perry in 2020 for $15 million, but tried to cancel the deal days later, claiming he was under the influence of painkillers when he signed.
A court ruled the contract was legal and late last year Perry was declared the legal owner of the 1930s gated estate, which boasts a tennis court, two guesthouses and a swimming pool.
The Firework singer still wants to knock about $6 million off the price, but claims the bedridden octogenarian – currently in hospice care due to Huntington’s disease – owes her huge sums for repairs and lost rental income.
But he will have to plead his case in person after a California court ruled Perry must testify in an upcoming damages trial, where he will come face-to-face with Westcott’s furious relatives, who say the “exhausting” battle has ruined their loved one. the last days of the patriarch.
DailyMail.com understands that all of Westcott’s immediate family, including his sons Chart and Court Westcott – who is married to Real Housewives of Dallas alum Kameron Westcott – all plan to attend the LA Superior Court.
“It’s glaringly obvious that they’re trying to squeeze every last dollar out of Carl’s family without an ounce of empathy at the expense of the older man’s legacy,” a family friend told us.
“The fact is the Westcott family wants her to face them because they believe she deserves it. She took their father’s house and now she wants the shirt off his back.
“The least he can do is look them all in the eye when he does it.
The sprawling 9,285-square-foot compound in the Santa Ynez foothills has been registered under the owner DDoveB since May, a nod to Perry’s three-year-old daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom.
Perry put $9 million into escrow to pay Westcott, a celebrated veteran of the US Army’s 101st Airborne who was born into a “dirt poor” family in Mississippi.
He grew up in a shotgun town with no plumbing, but moved to LA where he built several successful companies including 1-800-Flowers.
His father had only a high school education and could not read or write, and Westcott was sent to a home for juvenile delinquents for selling school lunch vouchers.
But he got his life together when he moved to LA as a teenager and started selling cars, eventually opening his own dealership.
“When you’re poor in Mississippi, it’s the poorest of the poor,” Westcott once said.
“We didn’t have a car and I always thought people with cars were rich. I actually thought people with lawns were quite remarkable.’
Exactly how much of the remaining $6 million Perry owes him will be determined by the second phase of their protracted, four-year legal saga.
The damages trial was originally scheduled to take place this month and last several days. But Westcott’s lawyers asked for more time after Perry — worth an estimated $350 million — hired 25 experts to search the house for mistakes.
They will argue that the two-acre property needs repairs due to water damage, an oak tree that fell on the building, and various other maintenance issues that arose while she waited years to move in.
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She also wants approximately $3.5 million in lost rent that she allegedly could have earned from the luxury retreat, even though she said at the time of the sale that she planned to raise her daughter there.
Perry’s attorneys argued at the June 20 hearing that she and Bloom — who is also likely to be subpoenaed and asked to testify — were essentially “laymen” and would instead rely on the statements of professional construction experts.
But Judge Joseph Lipner insisted: “As I sit here now, I certainly expect Ms. Perry to be a witness.”
DailyMail.com previously revealed how Perry became embroiled in an extraordinary row with Westcott after he claimed his judgment was clouded by powerful medication and ill health when he signed the deal on July 15, 2020.
He only bought the house in May of that year and moved in two months before meeting with Perry’s agent, Bernie Goodvi, who agreed to pay him $3,750,000 more than he had just bought it for.
The then 80-year-old was released from hospital just four days before the signing and underwent a six-hour back operation.
He was on a strong cocktail of opiates to dull the pain, his lawyers said.
When the medication wore off, Westcott said he realized he had made a mistake and informed Berkshire Hathaway in a July 22 email that he no longer intended to sell.
“The combination of his age, the fragility of his back and recent surgery, and the opiates he was taking several times a day caused Mr. Westcott to be of unsound mind,” his complaint alleged.
Perry and Bloom’s agents ignored Westcott’s plea and wrote to him a few days later to warn him that they would sue if he did not surrender the property.
Westcott’s family took up the fight on his behalf after he became bedridden and mentally incapacitated due to Huntington’s disease, which attacks the brain and can cause progressive dementia.
She won the first phase of their trial last year after Judge Lipner ruled there was “no convincing evidence” that Westcott lacked the capacity to sign the contract.
“There are no grounds for appeal. The contract must be honored,” he concluded, leaving only the issue of damages — essentially how much of a discount to give Perry, who did not testify in person — to be determined.
It wasn’t the first time Perry had legal trouble when it came to buying a home.
In 2015, she clashed with senior Roman Catholic nuns over the sale of a convent she bought in 2015, paying $14.5 million in cash to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez.
Sister Rita Callanan and Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, who have lived at the convent since the 1970s, argued that Gomez had no right to unload the property and said they had already sold it weeks earlier for $15.5 million.
However, the archdiocese filed a lawsuit to block their agreement, arguing that it was the nuns who overstepped their authority.
A judge ruled against the nuns in 2016, awarding Perry and the archdiocese a total of more than $15 million in damages.
During the legal battle in 2018, Sister Holzman, 89, collapsed and died during court proceedings.
This prompted Sister Callanan, the only surviving nun who lived in the Order of the Sacred and Immaculate Heart of Mary, to declare that Perry had ‘blood on her hands’.