LOS ANGELES (CNN) — AEG Live’s lawyer warned jurors that “we’re going to show some ugly stuff” as he began the defense’s opening statement in the Michael Jackson wrongful death trial Monday.
The concert promoter has no choice to reveal Jackson’s “deepest, darkest secret” because the company must defend itself from the accusation from Jackson’s family that it is responsible for the pop icon’s death, Marvin Putnam said.
Before Putnam began, a Jackson lawyer played for the jury a sentimental song Jackson wrote and recorded for his three children titled “You Are My Life.”
“You are the sun, you make me shine more like the stars that twinkle at night,
You are the moon that glows in my heart,
You’re my day time, my nighttime,
My world. You are my life.”
Katherine Jackson, his mother, wiped tears from her face as her late son’s soft voice filled the small courtroom.
And so begins a trial, which could last several months, that promises dramatic revelations and legal fireworks. With opening statements delivered, the Jackson’s call their first witness Tuesday morning — Orlando Martinez, the Los Angeles Police detective who investigated Jackson’s death.
AEG Live executives are “ruthless guys” who ignored Michael Jackson’s health problems and his doctor’s ethical conflicts, which led to the pop icon’s death, a Jackson family lawyer argued Monday.
Jurors earning $15 a day will decide whether one of the world’s largest entertainment companies should pay Jackson’s mother and three children billions of dollars for its liability in the pop icon’s death.
Randy and Rebbie Jackson, Michael’s siblings, were with their mother in the front row, just a few feet away from jurors.
“There will be no question in your mind that they were ruthless and they wanted to be No. 1 at all cost,” Jackson lawyer Brian Panish said.
AEG executives knew that Jackson was emotionally and physically weak, Panish told jurors.
Jackson was in an “obvious sharp decline” in the weeks after Murray began working as his personal doctor while he prepared for his comeback concerts.
Another warning sign should have been that Murray asked for $5 million for the job and eventually agreed on $150,000 a month, Panish said. Another doctor had told AEG he would do the job for $40,000 a month as long as Jackson was “clean,” meaning not on drugs, he said.
Panish played for the jury a video of an AEG expert who agreed that Murray’s pay demand was “outrageous.”
“That raised red flag because it was an enormous sum of money,” defense expert Marty Hom said.
“AEG ignored the obvious red flags, and they hired Dr. Murray,” Panish said.
Later in the trial, jurors will hear Michael’s oldest son and daughter describe their father’s last days. But they will also endure weeks of testimony from medical and financial experts offering opinions about the singer’s health, addiction and career.
Only 16 journalists and a few members of the public will be allowed inside the courtroom because many of its 45 seats are reserved for parties involved in the trial, including the Jackson family. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos denied CNN’s request to televise the trial.
The central issue
The central issue is simple: Did AEG Live, the company promoting Jackson’s comeback concerts in 2009, hire or supervise Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson’s June 25, 2009, death?
Jackson died two weeks before his “This Is It” comeback concerts, organized by AEG Live, were to have debuted in London. The coroner ruled Jackson died from a fatal combination of sedatives and propofol, a surgical anesthetic that Murray told investigators he used to put Jackson to sleep almost every night in the month before his death.
The Jacksons argue that AEG executives knew about the star’s weakened health and his past use of dangerous drugs while on tour. They’re liable in his death because they pressured Jackson and the doctor to meet their ambitious schedule to prepare for the London shows despite that knowledge, their lawyers contend.
A cornerstone of their case is an e-mail AEG Live Co-CEO Paul Gongaware wrote 11 days before Jackson’s death. The e-mail to show director Kenny Ortega addressed concerns that Murray had kept Jackson from a rehearsal the day before: “We want to remind (Murray) that it is AEG, not MJ, who is paying his salary. We want to remind him what is expected of him.”
Jackson lawyers argue the e-mail is evidence that AEG Live used Murray’s fear of losing his lucrative job as Jackson’s personal physician to pressure him to have Jackson ready for rehearsals despite his fragile health.
Gongaware, in a video deposition played in court Monday, said he could not remember writing the e-mail, which the Jackson lawyers call the “smoking gun” in their case.
“They put Dr. Murray in a position where if he said Michael can’t go or can’t play, if he said I can’t give you those drugs, then he doesn’t get paid,” Panish told jurors Monday.
Gongaware, who managed two of Jackson’s tours in the 1990s, knew that Jackson relied on addictive opiates during his concert tours, Panish said.
He played a video of one doctor who said he warned Gongaware about it in 1993.
“We felt that we needed to an intervention,” Dr. Stuart Finkelstein said. “We needed to do detox.”
AEG’s lawyer argued Monday that Gongaware and other AEG executives had no way of knowing about Jackson’s use of propofol to sleep.
“AEG knew nothing about this decade-long propofol use,” Putnam said. “They were a concert promoter. How could they know?”
He promised that Jackson’s ex-wife and mother of his two oldest children, Debbie Rowe, will testify that she assisted in administering propofol to Jackson in the 1990s when she was a nurse.
She saw several doctors put Mr. Jackson to sleep in hotel rooms while on tour,” he said, including in Munich, London, Paris.
“The truth is Mr. Jackson fooled everyone,” Putnam said about Jackson’s porpofol use. “He kept those who might have helped him at a distance and no one knew his deepest, darkest secret.”
Jackson’s ability to keep his private side private meant AEG could not see any red flags warning of Jackson’s destruction, Putnam said.
“They didn’t see this coming,” he said. “They had no idea.”
Putnam said Jackson family members will testify about their failed attempts at intervention and their lack of knowledge about what was happening.
“If they didn’t know what was going on, how could someone else think there was even a problem,” he said.
AEG contends that Jackson was responsible for his own demise, that he chose Murray to be his full-time doctor and that his drug addiction led him to a series of fatal choices.
“This case is about personal choices,” Putnam said. “People have responsibility for their personal choices. It was not a tragedy of AEG Live’s making.”
Murray was never an AEG employee but rather was chosen and paid by Jackson for nearly four years until Jackson died, AEG lawyers contend.
“AEG Live never paid Dr. Murray anything, ever,” Putnam said.
He played a snippet from Murray’s interview with Martinez two days after Jackson’s death.
“I am an employee for Michael Jackson but paid through AEG,” Murray told police.
Jackson, not AEG chose Murray, he said.
Child molestation accusations against Jackson, for which he was acquitted after a trial, are relevant because they resulted in an increase in his drug use, Putnam said.
He focused on Jackson’s doctor shopping for drugs, displaying a chart of 40 doctors and nurses who Jackson sought drugs from.
Jackson’s family seeks billions
Just before Monday’s session began, the judge issued a series of rulings that will allow Jackson expert witnesses to testify but limit some of their opinions.
The lawsuit seeks a judgment against AEG Live equal to the money Jackson would have earned over the course of his remaining lifetime if he had not died in 2009. Jackson lawyers denied media reports that they were seeking $40 billion in damages if AEG Live is found liable, but it could cost the company several billion dollars, according to estimates of Jackson’s income potential.
AEG Live is a subsidiary of AEG, a global entertainment company that was up for sale recently with an $8 billion asking price.
Palazuelos reversed an earlier tentative decision Monday that would have limited the amount of damages the Jacksons could argue AEG should pay if found liable in the singer’s death. The decision raises the potential damages by about $1 billion.
One of the Jacksons’ experts, certified pubic accountant Arthur Erk, estimated that Michael Jackson could have earned $1.4 billion by taking his “This Is It” tour around the world for 260 shows. AEG executives discussed extending the tour beyond the 50 shows scheduled for London, Jackson lawyers said.
Jackson lawyer Perry Sanders, in arguing for the judge to allow Erk’s testimony, said when “This Is It” tickets went on sale in March 2009, there was the “highest demand to see anyone in the history of the world. No one has ever come close.”
“There was so much demand, they filled 2 million seats in hours,” Sanders said, quoting an e-mail from AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips sent to AEG’s owner.
“We would have had to do 100-plus shows to fill the demand” in London, he said Phillips wrote. Jackson could have packed the Tokyo Dome several times in a world tour, he said.
But AEG lawyer Sabrina Strong called it “very speculative” that Jackson would have even finished the 50 London shows before dying.
AEG lawyers argued that Jackson didn’t perform 260 shows and make that much money even in his prime. “He never came anywhere close to that,” Strong said. “No one other than Cher has ever done that.”
Erk also calculated Jackson would have followed with four more world tours before he turned 65.
Palazuelos weighed in during a hearing on Thursday, noting that the Rolling Stones are still touring into their 70s.
The Jacksons will also try to convince jurors that he would have made a fortune off of a long series of Las Vegas shows, endorsements, a clothing line and movies.
Strong argued that Jackson had a history of failed projects and missed opportunities, calling Erk’s projections “a hope, a dream, and not a basis for damages.”
Erk, under the new ruling, will be able to tell jurors about the “loss of earning capacity” suffered by the family because of Jackson’s death. This means the jury can consider the Jackson argument that he could have earned millions with a clothing line, endorsements and movies. The expert’s estimate that Jackson would have completed five world tours before he was 65, if he had lived, can also be considered.
AEG can argue, however, that Jackson’s past failures diminished the potential earnings.
None of the Jackson experts can offer an opinion on the question of whether Murray was hired by AEG.
The witness lists include many members of the Jackson family, including Katherine Jackson. Other celebrity witnesses on the list are Sharon Osbourne, Quincy Jones, Spike Lee, Ray Parker Jr., Lisa Marie Presley, Diana Ross and Lou Ferrigno.
