Michael made a highly publicized announcement in 1993 that he was ending his "Dangerous" tour early to enter a substance abuse rehab program because of an addiction to painkillers. His last "Dangerous" concert was in Mexico on November 11 1993, and the video above was a deposition recorded November 8.
"I don't remember hearing it," Phillips testified, referring to the tour cancellation.
"When's the first time you heard?" Jackson lawyer Brian Panish asked.
"Just now," Phillips responded.
Phillips said he didn't learned about it from a December 2008 news story focusing on Jackson's drug abuse and rehab, even though he sent it in an e-mail to Jackson's manager saying:
"Have you read these stories? This reporter did a lot of research."
"I don't remember reading it," Phillips testified.
What's up Phillips, have you the same memory loss problem as Paul Gongaware - see my post here? Are we really meant to believe that the CEO of such a huge concert promoter neither heard of nor researched this before 2013. It's laughable. But I see why he's saying this: if he admits he knew Michael's drug history AND ignored warnings that Michael was too ill to perform, he is going to make AEG liable and he's not going to do anything to let THAT happen now is he?
Phillips began worrying about Michael backing out of the concert tour just a month after he signed the contract with AEG Live to promote and produce it and more than a week before the announcement. OK, so what specifically was worrying Phillips? If Phillips allegedly had no knowledge of Michael being ill or taking drugs, what prompted this even before the announcement of the concerts took place?
"I was worried that we would have a mess, his career would be over," Phillips testified. "There were a lot of things I was worried about."
But instead of pulling the plug then, before millions of dollars were spent, AEG Live chose to force Michael ahead.
"Once we go on sale, which we have the right to do, he is locked," Gongaware wrote to Phillips.
Michael, his children and manager Tohme Tohme boarded a private jet for the London announcement, but he was not ready when Phillips went to his hotel suite to escort him to the O2 Arena.
"MJ is locked in his room drunk and despondent. Tohme and I are trying to sober him up and get him to the press conference with his hair/makeup artist," Phillips told parent-company AEG CEO Tim Leiweke in an e-mail.
Phillips testified it was "a very tense situation" and "frankly, I created the tension in that room. Because I was so nerve-racked, OK, the time slipping away, and his career slipping away."
AEG was hosting thousands of Michael Jackson fans and hundreds of journalists for the anticipated announcement, which would be seen live around the world.
"I screamed at him so loud the walls were shaking," Phillips wrote to Leiweke. "Tohme and I have dressed him, and they are finishing his hair, and then we are rushing to the O2. This is the scariest thing I have ever seen. He's an emotionally paralyzed mess, filled with self-loathing and doubt now that it is show time. He is scared to death. Right now I just want to get through this press conference."
Phillips e-mailed a man who was waited outside the hotel with a convoy of vehicles that he put Jackson in a cold shower and "just slapped him and screamed at him."
In court, Phillips downplayed his words as "an exaggeration."
Yes, of course he did, because if Phillips admits he was REALLY worried and concerned, the are going to ask him WHY.
Yes, of course he did, because if Phillips admits he was REALLY worried and concerned, the are going to ask him WHY.
"I slapped him on the butt," he testified, comparing it to what a football coach would do to a player.
Michael arrived at the 02 more than two hours late to announce: "This is it. This is really it. This is the final curtain call. OK, I'll see you in July."
"Now I have to get him on the stage. Scary!" Phillips wrote in an e-mail to another promoter.
Jackson lawyers contend this fear led AEG Live executives to take control of Michael's life as he prepared in Los Angeles to premiere the tour in London in July of 2009.
Show producers sent warnings in mid-June that Jackson's health appeared to be failing.
Associate producer Alif Sankey testified earlier in the trial that she "had a very strong feeling that Michael was dying" because of his frail health.
She called show director Kenny Ortega after one rehearsal. "I kept saying that 'Michael is dying, he's dying, he's leaving us, he needs to be put in a hospital,'" Sankey said. "'Please do something. Please, please.' I kept saying that. I asked him why no one had seen what I had seen. He said he didn't know."
After Michael failed to show up at several rehearsals in June -- or was unable to perform sometimes when he did appear -- Gongaware sent an e-mail to Phillips that Jackson lawyers call their "smoking gun."
They argue the message shows the executives used Murray's fear of losing his lucrative job as Michael's personal physician to pressure him to have Michael ready for rehearsals despite his fragile health. "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," Gongaware wrote.
Gongaware testified earlier that he did not remember writing the e-mail and Phillips testified last week that he didn't remember reading it. How very convenient. A double-act and they are closing ranks.
However, Phillips convened what he called "an intervention" at Michael's home with Murray, Michael and Ortega present.
A Los Angeles police detective summarized what Phillips told investigators about that meeting: "Randy (Phillips) stated that Kenny (Ortega) got in Michael's face, at which time Dr. Murray admonished Randy, stating, 'You're not a doctor. Butt out."
Asked about it in court, Phillips said the detective's summary is wrong. "That's not what I said," Phillips testified. "I told them something completely different than this. They just conflated the people and the things." Oh. So you can remember what you said on this occasion, Phillips, are you suffering from selective memory by any chance?
What actually happened was Murray "got into and admonished Kenny Ortega not to be an amateur physician and analyse Michael," Phillips said.
Phillips sent an e-mail after the meeting saying he had confidence in Murray, "who I am gaining immense respect for as I get to deal with him more."
"This doctor is extremely successful (we check everyone out) and does not need this gig, so he (is) totally unbiased and ethical," Phillips' e-mail said. So, you check everyone out, except you didn't check Murray out nor did you check Michael out?
He conceded in court that no background check of Murray was conducted by AEG Live. Jackson lawyers argue that had it been done, they would have discovered Murray was in deep debt and dependent on the lucrative job.
Murray said he was infusing Propofol into Michael every night to treat his insomnia so Michael would be rested for rehearsals.
Phillips contradicted Gongaware's earlier testimony that Michael was under no contractual obligation to attend rehearsals. Phillips refused to advance money to help Michael pay his staff days before his death because he believed the singer was "in an anticipatory breach" of his contract because he had missed rehearsals, he testified.
Phillips acknowledged that he and his lawyer met with Michael's former manager Tohme Tohme -- another key witness in the trial -- last month. The meeting happened in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel on May 4, at the end of the first week of testimony. That is May 4 2013, folks.
"I don't remember if it was the testimony in this case or what the lunch was about, but Marvin Putnam (AEG's lead lawyer in the trial) was at the lunch with me," Phillips said when asked about it by Panish. If your memory really is that bad Phillips, they need to replace you as CEO. I suspect he remembers very well what was discussed.
He couldn't remember "100%" but they may have discussed Tohme's legal battle to get paid by Jackson's estate, he said.
"I don't remember what I ate that day," Phillips said.
"I didn't ask you what you ate," Panish replied. "I asked you what you talked about."
"I can't jail somebody for not answering a question," Palazuelos said when Panish complained Phillips was being evasive. "There's only so much I can do."
She warned Phillips that jurors would see it for themselves.
"You give an answer, and you're not answering the question, the jury is going to get the impression that you're being evasive."
"I realize that," Phillips said.
Of course he realises that, he's doing it on purpose to evade losing AEG money and his saving own ass.
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