Vanessa Amorosi’s bitter feud with mum Joyleen Robinson to play out in court trial
Joyleen Robinson has failed in a bid to vacate a trial brought by her famous daughter – who is seeking restitution for touring income and royalties – just weeks before it is set to begin.
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The mother of popstar Vanessa Amorosi has told a court she’s been “left out in the cold” as she asked for a trial probing the bitter feud with her famous daughter to be scrapped.
Joyleen Robinson fronted the Supreme Court on Friday, where she explained that her lawyer had given her the flick more than two years into a civil lawsuit with Amorosi over touring income and royalties.
The Melbourne-born singer launched action against her mother in March 2021, claiming Mrs Robinson “engaged in unconscionable conduct” when she took control of the 17-year-old schoolgirl’s finances in 1999.
Amorosi, now 42, currently lives in the USA and appeared for the brief court hearing via video link.
One of Australia’s most beloved singers, Amorosi is seeking restitution, the sale of a property in Narre Warren and to be appointed trustee of a family investment trust.
Her mum, standing at the bar table on Friday, told Judicial Registrar Martin Keith she would be “happy to go to court”.
“But the lawyer I had for the last two years, he said there was some conflict so he couldn’t represent me anymore,” Mrs Robinson said. “I’ve been left out in the cold.”
She asked to vacate the long-awaited October trial date so she could get a new lawyer.
But Judicial Registrar Keith rejected her request, saying Amorosi had been “waiting for trial for a long time”, that they wouldn’t be able to secure another date within six months, and that “significant public resources” would likely be wasted.
For those reasons, he told her it would be “inappropriate to vacate the trial date”.
Mrs Robinson asked to have a mediation with her daughter before trial, telling the court they had one a long time ago “but we didn’t even sit in the same room or anything, so it was sort of a waste of time”.
Amorosi’s barrister Joel Fetter said he’d get instructions from the singer via text, but noted they’d already had a day-long mediation.
“I can’t see that anything has changed since then that would make a second mediation fruitful,” he said.
Twenty seconds later, Mr Fetter, looking at his phone, told the court with a chuckle, “I’ve just got that (instructions) … ‘No’.”
Mrs Robinson said it was “very frustrating for me”, because she had little time to find a new lawyer and “give them all the stuff that they need to know”.
But Judicial Registrar Keith simply encouraged her to “take those steps as quickly as possible because the trial date is looming and will remain in place”.
Court documents show that Amorosi asked her mum to give her control of trusts and a company, which Mrs Robinson had set up in 1999 for her daughter’s income to go through to “protect her from creditors”.
But the singer claimed her 2014 request for control was refused, with her mother “asserting that Vanessa’s husband would waste the funds”.
Mrs Robinson denies Amorosi’s allegations of financial mismanagement.
The trial is listed to begin on October 10.
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