An appeals court has dismissed Michael Jackson’s mother’s lawsuit against the $600 million sale of his catalog to Sony Music. The deal can now move forward.

A California appeals court found that Michael Jackson’s mother, Katherine Jackson, had no basis to challenge a lower court’s approval of a $600 million deal with Sony Music for her late son’s catalog. The appeals panel’s decision hands Jackson’s estate a victory and allows the deal to move forward.

The new ruling describes the original 2022 Sony deal as a “joint venture” in which estate administrators John Branca and John McClain were allowed to mediate while Michael’s estate is in probate – a court-supervised process for resolving disputes related to a will.

Katherine Jackson opposed the deal with Sony, claiming it violated the terms of her son’s will, specifically that all of the estate’s assets must be distributed to the trust and that his children and mother will be named as beneficiaries upon completion of the will’s execution. She argued in her lawsuit that transferring the estate’s “single most valuable asset” to a “new entity” was fundamentally inconsistent with her son’s wishes. In addition, she claimed the sale would make it “impossible” for the executors to transfer the “entire estate” to the trust.

The panel explains that the confidential transaction involved “transferring a substantial portion of the estate’s assets to a joint venture between the estate and a third party, in exchange for a large cash payment and an equity interest in the joint venture.” The three-judge panel rejected Katherine Jackson’s position, writing that Michael’s will “gives the executors broad powers to manage the estate’s assets while the estate is still in probate.” Thus, the previous judge’s decision did not violate the terms of Jackson’s will.

“The probate court did not err in concluding that it was Michael’s intention to allow the executors to sell any of the estate’s assets, including those at issue in the proposed transaction,” the judges wrote, noting that the deal “neither diminishes the value of the estate nor affects the executors’ future ability to transfer the estate’s assets to the trust.”

Michael Jackson’s estate has been in probate since his death in 2009, largely due to ongoing tax disputes with the IRS. When probate is finally completed, the entire estate will be transferred to the trust, with Jackson’s three children named as primary beneficiaries and Katherine named as the life beneficiary of a subtrust that will revert to the primary trust upon her death.