Idol Cosima faces court

AUSTRALIAN Idol reject Cosima De Vito will have to find her voice in front of a NSW Supreme Court judge this Friday, after her former managers won the right to sue for breach of contract yesterday.

Constantine Nellis and Ted Gardner, the men who managed De Vito's career after the original Idol series in 2003, are seeking more than $500,000 in lost earnings.

Their lawsuit will allege the diva made their professional roles "untenable", while De Vito has lodged a counter claim, stating the management team were "negligent" in guiding her singing career.

Nellis and Gardner took on the singer after she was widely shunned by local record companies, following her stunning withdrawal from the Channel 10 competition with throat nodules.

Forced to fund her own recordings, the singer scored a No. 1 hit with her self-titled debut album in 2004, a record at the time for an independent release.

But despite the success, the management relationship quickly soured and was severed two days before Christmas in the same year.

The lawsuit has been two years in the making, with mediation between the parties falling apart during a session at the National Disputes Centre in Sydney yesterday.

In 2005 De Vito unsuccessfully applied for an AVO against Nellis, after he sent her a series of emails apparently urging her to settle the matter privately.

While Nellis and Gardner have been desperate for their day in court to come, the timing of the trial could not be worse for De Vito, who is set to release her latest album This Is Now later this month.