LOS ANGELES, Feb 18 (AFP) - The family of the boy who has accused Michael Jackson of child molestation are "professional plaintiffs" with a history of making "outrageous" sex assault charges in lawsuits, Jackson's lawyers said.
The claim was made in documents filed late Thursday with the court where Jackson is on trial for allegedly molesting a 13-year-old boy as part of a defence bid to paint the youngster's mother as a grifter bent on extortion.
The pop icon's team asked Judge Rodney Melville to allow them to tell the trial jury of the family's litigation history, including a 1999 suit against a US department store that resulted in a 150,000-dollar settlement.
The suit, in which the woman claimed she was attacked and sexually assaulted by store security guards, stemmed from a 1998 incident in which the family was detained for allegedly shoplifting.
The lawsuit demonstrates that the woman, known as Jane Doe, has a "pattern and practice of using her children to commit frauds," attorney Robert Sanger said.
The store "found itself the target of a fraudulent lawsuit orchestrated by professional plaintiffs," he said.
"Following the incident, (Doe) coached her children to lie about the incident in order to reach a financial settlement with the store," Sanger wrote.
Doe and her husband "coerced their own children into stealing and lying for financial gain," he added.
"Rather than admit to their culpability in using their children to shoplift, (Doe) concocted an outrageous story that the security guards responsible for detaining the family assaulted them by using excessive force and she eventually claimed that they sexually assaulted her," Sanger said.
The store settled the case in order to avoid a trial in which jurors may have decided in the family's favour since Jackson's young accuser, who was then nine-years-old, was suffering from cancer.
Sanger said the defence wanted to call witnesses who would testify that Doe "used scripts to prepare her children on their depositions in the case" to "assist her in her scheme to defraud" the store.
Jackson has pleaded innocent to 10 charges, including child molestation and alleged conspiracies to kidnap and illegally imprison the boy and his family at Neverland.

02/18/2005 19:32 GMT - AFP