(ajc) Dexter Scott King said Saturday that he was "shocked" by a recent lawsuit filed by his siblings accusing him of mismanaging money in one family account and taking money for his own personal use out of another. "It totally blindsided me. I think maybe it was a reckless attempt to express their grievances. They are false claims and I will addressing that accordingly," King said in a brief interview at his Malibu home a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean in an exclusive community west of Los Angeles. "We are private family," King said. "It is a private business matter, you know, a family dispute, if you will. It's probably blown out of proportion, but until I've had a chance to thoroughly review the complaint, it's just kind of difficult for me to address it." Back in Atlanta, Juanita Abernathy winced when she picked up her Saturday morning newspaper and read that the children of Martin Luther King Jr. were suing each other over money. "It tugs at the heartstrings, because I know that their parents would not want this," said Abernathy, the wife of the late Ralph David Abernathy, King's closest confidant. "They taught their children to get along." Last Thursday, Bernice and Martin King III filed the lawsuit against Dexter accusing him of mishandling funds from King Inc., hiding documents from them, and taking money out of the Coretta Scott King estate. At stake are millions of dollars in assets linked to King's intellectual property rights, including the million that donors in Atlanta recently paid to acquire 10,000 pages of his papers.

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