The California Court of Appeal will hear today, Wednesday, the revival of rejected lawsuits by two men who claim that Michael Jackson sexually assaulted them when they were children for years, a step that the court seems likely to take after a preliminary ruling that would order the cases to be returned to a lower court for trial.

The lawsuits were filed after Jackson's death in 2009 by Wade Robson in 2013 and James Safechuck the following year, and the two men became widely known for telling their stories in the documentary "Leaving Neverland."

Both filed lawsuits against "MJ Production" and "MJ Venture," two companies that Jackson was the sole owner and sole contributor to.

In 2021, Superior Court Judge Mark A. Young ruled that the two companies and their employees had no legal duty to protect Robson and Safechuck from Jackson and dismissed the lawsuits, but in a preliminary decision last month, the Second District Court of Appeal in California overturned this judge and ordered the cases to go to trial, and Jackson's estate attorneys will attempt on Wednesday to persuade the Court of Appeal to change its course.

The lawsuits had already bounced back from a 2017 dismissal when Young dismissed them for exceeding the statute of limitations, and a new California law that temporarily expanded the scope of sexual assault claims led the Court of Appeal to return them, with Jackson's personal belongings, the assets he left after his death, having been dismissed as defendants in 2015.

Robson, now a 40-year-old choreographer, met Jackson when he was 5 years old and continued to appear in Jackson's music videos and record music on his label.

His lawsuit claimed that Jackson molested him over seven years, and he says he was an employee of Jackson, and that the employees of the two companies had a duty to protect him in the same way that scouts or schools need to protect children from their leaders.

The Jackson estate has vehemently and repeatedly denied that he abused either boy, asserting that Robson testified in Jackson’s 2005 criminal trial that he was not abused, and Safechuck said the same to authorities.

The Associated Press does not ordinarily name individuals who say they were victims of sexual abuse, but Robson and Safechuck have come forward repeatedly and consented to the use of their identities.

Safechuck, now 45, said he met Jackson while filming a Pepsi commercial when he was 9 years old, and he said Jackson called him often and showered him with gifts before moving on to a series of sexual abuse incidents.