Katy Perry to face family of dying veteran homeowner in damages trial

Katy Perry faces a fiery courtroom showdown with the family of the dying veteran who was forced to surrender his Montecito mansion to her in a years-long property dispute, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Ailing Carl Westcott, 84, agreed to sell his eight-bed home to Perry in 2020 for $15million but days later tried to nix the deal claiming he was under the influence of painkillers when he signed.

A court ruled the contract was legit and late last year Perry was declared the legal owner of the gated 1930s estate which boasts a tennis court, two guesthouses and a pool.

The Firework singer still wants to knock around $6million off the price, however, claiming that the bedridden octogenarian – currently receiving hospice care for Huntington’s disease – owes her vast sums for repairs and lost rental income.

But she’ll have to make her case in person after a California judge ruled that Perry must give evidence at an upcoming damages trial where she’ll come face to face with Westcott’s furious kin, who say the ‘exhausting’ battle has marred their beloved patriarch’s final days.

DailyMail.com understands that Westcott’s entire immediate family, including his sons Chart and Court Westcott – who is married to Real Housewives of Dallas alum Kameron Westcott – all plan to attend LA Superior Court.

‘It’s clearly apparent that she’s trying to squeeze every last dollar out of Carl’s family without any shred of empathy at the expense of an elderly man’s legacy,’ a family friend told us.

‘The fact is the Westcott family wants her to face them because they believe they deserve that. She’s taken their father’s house and now she wants the shirt off his back.

‘The least she can do is look them all in the eye while she does it.’

The sprawling 9,285-square foot compound in the Santa Ynez foothills has been registered under the owner DDoveB, a nod to Perry’s three-year-old daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom, since May.

Perry has placed $9million in escrow to pay Westcott, a celebrated veteran of the US Army 101st Airborne who was born into a ‘dirt poor’ family in Mississippi.

He grew up in a shotgun house without plumbing but moved to LA where he went on to build several successful companies including 1-800-Flowers.

His father had only a second-grade education and couldn’t read or write and Westcott was send to a home for juvenile delinquents for selling school lunch vouchers.

But he pulled his life together when he moved to LA as a teen and started selling cars, eventually opening his own dealerships.

‘When you are poor in Mississippi, that is the poorest of the poor,’ Westcott once said. 

‘We didn’t have a car, and I always thought people with cars were wealthy. In fact, I thought people with lawns were pretty remarkable.’

Exactly how much of the remaining $6million balance Perry owes him will be determined by the second phase of their protracted, four-year court saga.

The damages trial was originally scheduled to take place this month, lasting several days. But Westcott’s lawyers pleaded for more time after Perry – worth an estimated $350million – hired 25 experts to scour the house for faults.

They will argue that the two-acre property needs repairs for water damage, an oak tree that fell on a building, and various other maintenance issues that have arisen while she waited years to move in.

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She also wants around $3.5million in lost rent that she could have supposedly earned on the posh retreat despite stating at the time of the sale that she planned to raise her daughter there.

Perry’s lawyers argued at a June 20 hearing that she and Bloom – who is also likely to be subpoenaed and asked to give evidence – were essentially ‘lay people’ and would rely instead on statements from professional construction experts.

But Judge Joseph Lipner insisted: ‘As I sit right here this minute I definitely expect Ms Perry to be a witness.’

DailyMail.com previously revealed how Perry had become ensnared in the extraordinary dispute with Westcott after he claimed his judgment was clouded by powerful medication and ill health when he inked the deal on July 15, 2020.

He had only purchased the home in May of that year and moved in two months prior to his dealings with Perry’s representative, Bernie Gudvi, who agreed to pay him $3,750,000 more than he had just bought it for.

The then-80-year-old had been discharged from the hospital only four days prior to signing, having undergone a six-hour back operation. 

He was on a potent cocktail of opiates to numb the pain, his lawyers said.

When the medication wore off, Westcott said he realized he’d made a mistake and informed Berkshire Hathaway by email on July 22 that he no longer intended to sell up.

‘The combination of his age, frailty from his back condition and recent surgery, and the opiates he was taking several times a day rendered Mr. Westcott of unsound mind,’ his complaint argued.

Perry and Bloom’s agents disregarded Westcott’s plea, writing to him days later to warn they would sue if he did not relinquish the property.

Westcott’s family took up the fight on his behalf after he became bedridden and mentally incapacitated because of Huntington’s disease, which attacks the brain and can cause progressive dementia.

She emerged victorious in the first phase of their trial last year after Judge Lipner ruled there was ‘no persuasive evidence’ that Westcott lacked the capacity to sign the contract.

‘There are no grounds for rescission. The contract must be respected,’ he concluded, leaving only the issue of damages – essentially how big a discount to award to Perry, who didn’t give evidence in person – to be determined.

That wasn’t the first time Perry had had legal problems when it came to purchasing a home.

In 2015, she sparred with elderly Roman Catholic nuns over the sale of a convent she purchased in 2015, paying $14.5million in cash to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez.

Sister Rita Callanan and Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, who had lived in the convent since the 70s, claimed Gomez had no right to offload the property, and said they had already sold it weeks prior for $15.5million.

But the Archdiocese sued to block their deal, arguing that it was the nuns who had exceeded their authority.

A judge ruled against the nuns in 2016 and awarded Perry and the Archdiocese damages totaling more than $15million.

During the 2018 legal battle, Sister Holzman, 89, collapsed and died during a court appearance.

That prompted Sister Callanan, the only surviving nun who lived at the Order of the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to declare that Perry had ‘blood on her hands‘.