Bitter feud of 'Greatest Show on Earth'

The wholesome image of Kenneth Feld's entertainment empire has shattered as he and his sister fight in the courts. Photo /AP

The late multimillionaire owner of Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey circus, Irvin Feld, built an empire of wholesome entertainment meant to bring families together.

His own two children, however, are so estranged they couldn't even mourn with one another in peace.

The bitter family history behind "the greatest show on Earth" is being aired in a United States court case starting next week before District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle.

Karen Feld filed a US$110 million ($140 million) lawsuit against her younger brother, Kenneth, for assault when they came together to mourn their dead in the traditional Jewish rite of sitting shiva.

The suit filed by Karen Feld, 63, says her 62-year-old brother long wanted to harm her and control her life because he feared she would reveal facts about their father and family that could tarnish the image of the family business.

Irvin Feld created Feld Entertainment, which Kenneth Feld now runs and bills as the world's largest source of live family entertainment, including the circus, Disney on Ice, drag racing and monster truck shows.

Kenneth Feld has gone to great lengths to protect the family's privacy; he even hired a prominent former CIA agent to run a secret eight-year operation to spy on and divert an author who wanted to write a family history. The author's revelations included Irvin Feld's homosexuality, his wife's suicide and his children's long-running feud.

"What's more wholesome than Disney and the circus, on the surface? But I think what people have to realise is sometimes there's a big difference between appearances and reality," Karen Feld said in an interview.

Karen Feld says her brother's vendetta against her led to his ordering guards to throw her and the toy poodle that is her constant companion out of their aunt Shirley's mourning gathering in the Washington penthouse where they grew up. She said the guards beat her, inflicting severe injuries that required brain and knee surgeries.

Kenneth Feld, who lives in Tampa, Florida, declined to be interviewed through his attorney who said his client preferred to make his case to the jury.

But in court filings he denies Karen Feld's allegations and has filed a counterclaim against his sister for trespassing, accusing her of desecrating their aunt's memorial with a blasphemous outburst.

"She acted in an absolutely outrageous manner, completely disregarding the feelings of myself and everyone else in attendance at the shiva service," Kenneth Feld said in court filings.

Karen Feld also sued to have her brother removed as the trustee of a US$5 million fund, of which they were the sole living beneficiaries, because she said he was so hostile to her. They settled a month ago on splitting the fund, set up by their uncle Israel Feld in his will.

The cases have been full of drama, including a delay for several months while Karen Feld said she was recovering from an altercation with Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents during a trip to her Maine lake house last year.

She says besides the physical injuries from the shiva assault, she has been suffering from post-traumatic stress that has ended her career as a local political and gossip columnist and made her "hyper-vigilant" around security officials.

Kenneth Feld says the TSA incident and another at a concert, in which she was restrained after an explosive confrontation, are examples of his sister's pattern of "temper tantrums" in which she behaves unreasonably, yells obscenities and becomes extremely aggressive.

Feld's attorneys point out that Karen tried to argue the same injuries and medical treatment arose after the concert as after the shiva incident.

Neither sibling is a stranger to civil litigation. Karen Feld has also sued a man she was in a car accident with and her former private nurse, who countersued alleging Karen Feld was abusive. Karen Feld tried but failed to persuade US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle to bar evidence of her nurse's suit and the airport and concert incidents from being introduced in this case.

Kenneth Feld has also been a defendant before. His former right-hand man, Charles Smith, sued after he was fired as a Feld Entertainment executive and eventually reached a settlement.

The case showed Feld's management had a long-running, multimillion-dollar feud with writer Jan Pottker, who had written a revealing Washington magazine article on the Felds in 1990.

The Performing Animal Welfare Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have sued Feld, too. His company also went on trial on allegations from animal activists that it abuses its elephants, but the case was dismissed without a ruling on the merits.

"Just as he's treated animals cruelly, he treated people cruelly in some cases," Karen Feld said at her Georgetown home, with her dog Campari on her lap. "And I think I'm one of them."

Judge Huvelle rejected Karen Feld's request to introduce evidence of the covert operations in her suit to demonstrate what her brother is capable of.

The judge also agreed with Kenneth Feld that there should be no testimony about anyone's sexual orientation or about his sister's allegations that he may be a member of a "Jewish mafia" involved in money laundering and murder.

The siblings hadn't communicated for years when Kenneth called his sister in September 2007 to tell her their 92-year-old aunt was dying and that she was welcome to attend services. They even hugged upon Karen's arrival at the shiva ceremony.

That's where their shared version of events ends.

Karen Feld's lawsuit explains that she had long suffered stress-induced, seizure-like symptoms from previous brain injuries. The suit says her dog Campari was trained to detect an attack coming on and signal that she should retreat to a dark, quiet place.

Karen Feld says that as the rabbi began the service, she detected signs of a seizure coming on and tried to withdraw to a back bathroom. Her complaint says "large, aggressive men" hauled her out of the apartment, threw her and her dog out the service entrance on to the marble floor in the hallway and beat her with fists. She says she erupted into a seizure-like episode and began swearing in "Tourette's-like speech."

She says her brother then came into the hall, threw her purse at her and told the three men: "Get rid of her. She's not family."

"He was directing that as if he was directing one of his shows - very calmly, just stood there and said that," she said in an interview.

She says two of the men dragged her on to the elevator, beat her and sexually groped her on the ride down, repeatedly slammed her on the elevator railing and ripped her right ear lobe until it bled. She said they dragged her across the lobby and threw her and her dog on the asphalt driveway.

Kenneth Feld responds that during the shiva only the den, dining room, living room and adjacent front bathroom were open to guests, and his sister tried to sneak toward a bedroom where family heirlooms and financial documents had been stored.

One guard said in court filings that Kenneth Feld's wife, Bonnie, instructed them not to allow Karen into the back rooms for fear she'd take something.

Kenneth Feld's counterclaim says when a guard confronted his sister, she "exploded in a rage", began yelling profanities and threw a glass of wine at him. He says her outburst prompted a pregnant catering chef to hide behind a table and forced the rabbi to stop the service.

He says his sister continued to shout as she was escorted into the hall and that he tried to step out and calm her, but she swung at him and missed.

Kenneth Feld says he re-entered the apartment because he was upsetting her more and then she was escorted from the building, but he denies she was beaten by guards.

Feld says his sister was quickly discharged from hospital and instructed to take over-the-counter painkillers.

Karen Feld says it's in nobody's interest to air their family's laundry and she would prefer to have settled without a public trial. But she said she would do whatever it took to get her life back and feel safe.

"It's hard to believe that we could come from the same parents genetically and be so different and that a brother could do this to his only sister," she said.

"We don't have to be the best of friends, but a normal relationship.

"Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that he would have me assaulted after inviting me to a house of mourning."

Family Feud
Kenneth and Karen Feld have been in legal disputes since their father, Irvin Feld, died in his sleep in 1984.

Irvin Feld gave his company to his son and left little to his daughter. Kenneth Feld also took ownership of their father's properties, including the Georgetown house where his sister lived. Karen Feld filed a lawsuit saying he was trying to have her thrown out of her home.

The eventual settlement allowed her to continue living there, surrounded by her photos with celebrities and the sculptures of dogs and nudes she now creates for therapy and for hire.

The Feld siblings' relationship further deteriorated after a magazine story by Jan Pottker.

Karen Feld says her brother thought the personal details could only have been revealed by his sister, who has written for several Washington newspapers.

Pottker's article described the entrepreneurial background of Irvin Feld, a rock-and-roll promoter who bought the Ringling Bros circus in 1967, and his homosexual affairs.

She wrote that their mother, Adele, blamed herself for her marital problems before she committed suicide in 1958.

Young Ken and Karen were then raised in a penthouse with sweeping views of Washington by their uncle Israel and aunt Shirley and got little attention from their surviving parent, according to Pottker.

Kenneth Feld responded to the article by hiring former CIA operative Clair George to investigate Pottker.

George obtained an outline of a biography of the Feld family that Pottker was writing, according to court documents.

He oversaw a scheme to spy on Pottker and arranged to secretly fund other writing projects to divert her from the Feld book.

George also inserted an associate into Pottker's life for eight years as an editor and confidant, while secretly sending Feld written reports on her activities.

When Pottker learned of the spy plot from the Smith suit, she sued Feld as well and the litigation lasted nine years before ending in a confidential settlement.

- AP