On Thursday, Detective Orlando Martinez who took the lead investigating Michael's death in 2009, testified that Katherine Jackson told him the family had tried drug interventions for Michael, believing he was addicted to painkillers. Katherine told him her son refused any help, saying he didn't have a drug problem.Martinez said Katherine told him she believed her son was taking medicine for back pain and might have become addicted.
Martinez also said that five days before Michael died, his manager Frank Dileo called Dr Murray, told him Michael was sick, and implored him to have blood tests done, according to a voicemail retrieved by police from Murray's cellphone.
"I'm sure you're aware he had an episode last night," the message said. "He's sick. ... We gotta see what he's doing."
But this testimony doesn't specify when the drug interventions were attempted. Nobody has categorically stated that one was attempted at any time in 2009. There were rumours that an intervention was going to be attempted around 11th June 2009, but Michael resisted and agreed to a 'sober coach' accompanying him to London, see article here. As far as I'm aware, nobody has confirmed that any of this actually happened, and there has been no evidence so far of this sober coach ever being hired. Michael spent a week filming the video footage due to be shown in the 'This Is It' concerts in Culver City, around the time of the alleged intervention, and it would have been only a month until he was due to open in London. Not the ideal time for an intervention. It would have delayed the concerts for sure, and by then everything had already been arranged. I'm sure Michael was feeling the pressure to deliver to his fans and AEG.
Now I'd like to address some speculation in the media about a letter written in 2007, by the Jacksons, denying any drug intervention. It has been speculated that this letter harmed the case against AEG, as it showed that the family had since admitted they attempted interventions, but denied it in the letter. This is a classic case of taking words out of context. The letter was written in 2007 specifically to address a 2007 article in People Magazine and other publications who said that Michael was dependent on painkillers and alcohol. The letter does not say the family have never staged an intervention. Michael's manager at the time, Raymone Bain, also issued a statement in June of 2007 denying Michael was on painkillers or in a wheelchair, in direct response to the media speculation at the time.
The way I see it, even if Michael did hide his drug intake, as AEG claim, there were enough people working directly with Michael in 2009 who knew of Michael's previous history, and who could ring alarm bells. Dileo, Karen Faye, Travis Payne, even Paul Gongaware had all worked with Michael before.Some were around during the 'Dangerous Tour' which was cancelled when Michael went into rehab. Dileo clearly saw the signs in 2009 and wanted action taken. Addicts often hide their addiction, or deny it. It's a well known fact. Addiction does not go away, it is managed.Anyone who has had an addiction in the past can lapse, and it is unlikely that the addict is going to ask for help. They are suffering from addiction. Saying that someone is an adult and therefore is responsible for their actions, does not work for people who have had an addiction.
Is this really your line of defense AEG?
A second witness called in the wrongful death lawsuit, Los Angeles Police Detective Orlando Martinez, said cell phone records showed that Dr. Conrad Murray called his girlfriend, Nicole Alvarez, at 1:08 p.m. on June 25, 2009, a minute after the ambulance carrying him and Michael Jackson left the Carolwood home for the UCLA Medical Center.
“Do you have an opinion as to the substance of that call?” Brian Panish, a lawyer representing Michael's mother and children asked Martinez.
“Yes,” the lawman replied, explaining that he had interviewed Alvarez and served a search warrant at her Santa Monica address.
“What was determined?” Panish asked.
“I found one piece of paper with Dr. Murray’s name — that had fallen behind the door of a cabinet — in the entire apartment (where) he’d been staying at (for) at least two months,” Martinez replied.
Panish asked whether he found that suspicious.
“Yes,” Martinez replied. “He was living there, and none of his stuff was there.”
Murray's 2011 trial revealed that he had had pharmacy shipments sent to Alvarez’s address, including Propofol.
Martinez told jurors his investigation led him to conclude that Murray was deep in debt at the time of Michael's death, giving him a financial motive to provide the anaesthetic Propofol as a treatment for insomnia.
On Tuesday, Martinez told jurors that Murray was about to lose his home to foreclosure and was approximately $500,000 in debt when he negotiated a $150,000-per-month agreement to act as Michael's personal physician for “This Is It”. The contract was never signed by Michael, however it was revealed by AEG lawyer Putnam that Michael Jackson was paying Murray during the last two months of his life.
"He was paying for him during his entire time in Los Angeles and during the time we're talking about, Dr. Conrad Murray was being paid by Michael Jackson," he said. "We know this. We know this because the plaintiffs have said so."
Martinez covered more financial ground in testimony Wednesday, saying Murray had a history of unpaid rent on his Las Vegas office and was delinquent in paying his taxes.
“(It’s) just some more evidence of him being in financial dire straits,” Martinez said.
He said police also ran credit reports on Murray.
“If anyone would have run the credit report, they would have got the same information?” Panish asked.
“Yes,” Martinez said.
Well, some of us fans investigated Murray in 2009, and we found out about his debt purely by looking on the internet. Yet there is an email from Randy Phillips, AEG Live President, to Kenny Ortega saying :
“This doctor is extremely successful (we check everyone out) and does not need this gig, so he is totally unbiased and ethical.”
The first witness to testify in the Michael Jackson wrongful death lawsuit trial was a paramedic who responded to a 911 call at Michael's rented Carolwood home in June 2009.
Paramedic Richard Senneff testified Tuesday that Michael most likely died before the ambulance crew arrived on the scene three minutes after getting the emergency call.
Senneff described Michael as resembling someone who was suffering from a long-term “chronic” disease.
“The patient looked very pale, very, very underweight. I could see his ribs. To me, he looked like someone who was at the end-stage of a long disease process,” Senneff testified.
This is the same testimony that Senneff gave at the Conrad Murray trial in 2011.
My view is also that Michael was very underweight by June 2009.
I know a lot of fans disagree with my view, but I'll explain my reasoning below.
Firstly, I have been a fan of Michael since 1973, and have seen photos of Michael as he grew from a skinny teenager into a slim adult. He was always slim. I know that.
Secondly, I spent many many years in and around the world of classical ballet dancers. Classical dancers are expected to be underweight their entire working life. I've stood next to hundreds and hundreds of dancers in class, when they are wearing only a leotard and tights, and spent time with them outside the theater. So I know what a healthy professional dancer body looks like.
I also know that a dancer can lose a lot of weight, if they are performing a demanding dance role regularly over a period of weeks. It's something they have to watch out for and accommodate, so that they do not lose too much weight and lose their strength and stamina along with it.
Watching rehearsal footage from 24th June 2009 in the 'This Is It' film, it immediately struck me that at times Michael looked very thin and seemed to try and conserve his energy between songs. This starkly contrasts with footage of Michael rehearsing 10 years or so prior, where he is constantly on the move, even between songs, and is running all over the stage. My knowledge of dancers and my experience of sitting in ballet rehearsals told me that Michael was in no fit state to start a series of concerts. I might have expected him to be thin and tired some weeks or months into the shows, but not before the shows had begun.
I selected the two photos of Michael above, as he is wearing similar outfits, but I think you can see that his hips and legs are a lot thinner in 2009.
I read that Michael's waist measurement in the 1980s was 32".
In 2009 it was 28".
His weight was 136lbs in 2009. I've checked some height/weight tables specifically for men, and they say that man of 5'9" should be between 142 and 176lbs, depending on their frame, so Michael was definitely underweight. Check out these videos of Michael rehearsing 'Billie Jean' from 1992 and 2009 and see the difference for yourself.
The opening statements have started in the wrongful death lawsuit, brought by Mrs Katherine Jackson against AEG Live, and already I'm pretty mad.
Earlier this month, it was reported that speaking in a forthcoming CNN documentary,
Michael Jackson: The Final Days, AEG Live lawyer Marvin Putnam said:
"Mr Jackson is a person who was known to doctor shop. He was known to be someone who would tell one doctor one thing and another doctor something else."
Putnam went on to say that Jackson's child molestation trial – over which he was acquitted – is important to the case as it resulted in a significant increase in his drug intake.Putnam then continued:
"We're talking about Michael Jackson. This is a man who would show up in pyjamas. This is a man who would stop traffic and get out and dance on top of his car. This is a man who would go to public events with a monkey named Bubbles. This is a man who said he slept in an oxygen chamber."
Today, in his opening statements, Putnam said AEG Live couldn’t have known that Jackson was using propofol, or the depths of his addiction. He said Jackson hid his propofol addiction from his family and medical professionals were barred from telling anyone about it due to doctor-patient confidentiality.
Really?
So on one hand 'everyone' knew about Michael's drug intake, but on the other hand, no one working on 'This is It' had a clue about it?
You have to decide which is true Putnam, because you can't have it both ways.
Are you deliberately trying to confuse us all?
Are you trying to create a fog so that we all get fed up wandering about in it and give up following the trial?
Well, nice try, but some of us have come across this tactic before. In the two year void between June 25th 2009, and Murray's trial, some of us went looking for answers. We scoured the internet and YouTube, reading interviews, court documents and financial articles. We had questions and we wanted answers.
But after a month or so, it became obvious that some of the people giving interviews were lying. In fact a lot of people were lying. We couldn't tell who was lying or what was the truth. Some fans gave up at this point because it was all too time consuming and confusing, and frankly, some of us had lives to live.
But it was clear that people were trying to steer us away from the truth, and were deliberately fogging in order to do it.
And by bringing up all that garbage that newspapers invented about Michael over a period of 20 years just to sell newspapers, Putnam only confirms that he is trying to 'fog' us again.
There seems to be a lot of confusion in the media, as the wrongful death lawsuit trial begins, over who was paying Dr Murray.
I have read Michael's contract, and as explained in my post The AEG Contract - Good or Bad?, Michael was to pay all 'This Is It' production costs from his 90%, and as that includes his manager's salary, it therefore it seems likely that it includes Dr Murray's salary.
However, the confusion has arisen because AEG Live had an advances agreement, as Michael would not be receiving any any money from the shows until the profit from the 'This Is It' shows started coming in. The advances included money for renting the Carolwood house, and probably the rent for Foxbury Manor where Michael was due to be staying in Kent, during the shows.
Dr Murray's salary could also be paid from these advances, although in fact Murray was not paid a dime, nor was his contract signed by Michael.
So in summary, Michael was paying Dr Murray, but AEG Live was providing funds via advances.
But then there is further confusion caused by the email from AEG Live Co-CEO Paul Gongaware which was sent on 14 June 2009 to Kenny Ortega :
"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."
It may have been a misunderstanding on Paul Gongaware's behalf, but this email suggests that it was AEG who was giving Murray his orders and also paying his salary. This is a pivotal part of the lawsuit, so let's wait and see what the actual truth is.
In September 2012, emails written by Kenny Ortega and Randy Phillips, discussing Michael Jackson's health came to light - see Los Angeles Times. For those of you that are not aware, Lloyds of London insured Michael for the 'This Is It' shows, and Lloyds of London have a lawsuit out which contends that AEG Live hid Michael's health problems from them. They had asked for Michael's medical records for the 5 years preceding 2009, but never received them, Murray said Michael refused to hand them over to him.The emails have been collected by Lloyds of London for their lawsuit.
When I first heard that Michael had died of a possible overdose (initially it was reported it may have been a Demerol overdose), one of the first things that crossed my mind was :
'Michael must have been in the last few weeks of rehearsal for the shows. He must have been onstage every day with dancers, musicians, choreographers, lighting crew etc.etc. Why didn't anyone notice that there was something wrong?'
I later found out that several people working on 'This Is It' had worked with Michael on previous shows, so they must know how he behaved during rehearsals and performances. This included Kenny Ortega and Travis Payne, the show's director and choreographer, as well as Paula Gongaware, who was now working for AEG.
These emails reveal that problems were apparent as early as March 2009, when Michael went to London to announce the 'This Is It' shows. According to the emails :
"MJ is locked in his room drunk and despondent," Phillips wrote in a March 5, 2009, e-mail to AEG Live's parent company. "I (am) trying to sober him up."
In March 2009, Michael had yet to hire Conrad Murray as his personal doctor, and as far as we know, Propofol was not being administered to him at this time. He passed a health test for Lloyds of London the same month, having been tested by Dr Slavit in January, and in this month he also asked nurse Cherilynn Lee to advise him on nutrition. She administered a vitamin cocktail to Michael several times in March, because he was experiencing a lack of energy and she also advises him on how to beat insomnia. Michael started rehearsals at Centerstaging at the end of March.
So it seemed that nothing is too seriously wrong with Michael at this point, and you could just put the problems of 5th March down to fear and nerves. In a previous post, This Time Around I cover corporate bullying, but what I haven't mentioned is the physical impact it can have on an individual, and how it can cause stress, fear and loss of confidence. I think that this is what Michael was experiencing, although I doubt anyone knew it at the time.
On 4th April 2009, Michael and Kenny Ortega flew to Las Vegas, with Conrad Murray. It is in Vegas that Murray first witnesses Michael being administered Propofol by another doctor, and by April 6, Murray is ordering Propofol by the box. He could be ordering the Propofol for another patient, but by then he was unofficially working for Michael, and he has since admitted that he administered Propofol for about 2 months by 25 June. So that means he started administering in April. At this point Murray's contract was not drawn up, and it wasn't written on paper until May 15, so technically Murray could have walked away from working for Michael at any point, up until the contract was signed by himself and Michael ( and it was never signed by Michael). His claim that he was 'entrapped' by Michael just makes him appear even more of a liar.
During May, Michael was still rehearsing at Centerstaging, and he took part in selecting dancers for his shows. The rehearsal room at Centerstaging was only just large enough to take the size of the 'This is It' stage, and I imagine it was here that the finer details of the music and choreography were thrashed out by the musicians and chorepgraphers, before the show was rehearsed in a larger theatre.
May 20th is the date that the first week of 'This Is it' shows were moved from 2009 into 2010. It is also the date of the video at the top of this Blog. By this time, Michael was being given Propofol 5 nights a week by Murray for over a month. At the time of writing, there is no anecdotal evidence or emails to show that Michael was unwell during May. However, more evidence may emerge as the lawsuit progresses. When the shows were moved to 2010, there was a lot of speculation in the media that this had been done because Michael was ill. Since January 2009 there had been various wildly speculative articles saying that Michael had a rare lung disease or skin cancer. In the video above, Ortega and Phillips are attempting to reassure people that the shows were not postponed for health reasons, but merely because of staging technicalities. As I write I am not clear how much interaction Ortega or Phillips had with Michael at this point in the rehearsals. We shall see.
The problems seem to escalate in June.
May 30, and the rehearsals moved to The Forum. From June 1 to 11, Michael was in Culver City to film the Dome Project, which is the HD footage to be shown during each concert. Some fans visited Michael on set June 11, and said that he was like a skeleton. By June 12, fans report that Michael does not want to go onstage, and security starts taking extreme measures against the fans who are waiting outside the Carolwood house.
June 14 AEG Live Co-CEO Paul Gongaware wrote an e-mail to show director Kenny Ortega addressing 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."
June 16 and the fans report that Michael did not go onstage again, and is often groggy when leaving home and after visiting Dr Arnold Klein. The emails leaked to the Los Angeles Times in September 2012, show that :
'Those rehearsing with Jackson began sounding alarms in mid-June, according to the emails, a month before his scheduled debut in London. They complained he missed rehearsals, was slow picking up routines and would have to lip-sync some of his signature numbers.
"MJ is not in shape enough yet to sing this stuff live and dance at the same time," the show's musical director informed supervisors in an email. Jackson missed another week of rehearsals, and when he finally showed up June 19, he was too weak to perform.'
On June 19, Michael was shivering, incoherent, and obsessing. Kenny Ortega sent him home.
He wrote in an e-mail to AEG Live President Randy Phillips:
"It is like there are two people there. One (deep inside) trying to hold on to what he was and still can be and not wanting us to quit him, the other in this weakened and troubled state. I believe we need professional guidance in this matter."
Phillips responded with a glowing endorsement of Murray:
"This doctor is extremely successful (we check everyone out) and does not need this gig so he is totally unbiased and ethical."
This is the point where someone, one of those many people who said they were Michael's 'friend', should have stepped in and said "he's not fit enough to continue". Unfortunately, it seems everybody saw it as someone else's responsibility, and they all seemed to hope that Michael was going to 'pull it out of the bag' at the last minute.
They obviously knew Michael was not fit enough, so how did they expect him to make a miraculous recovery?
I also don't understand how Phillips can say that he checked Murray out - the fans who checked out Murray after 25th June 2009 soon dug up all sorts of money issues that Murray had.
And why wasn't Ortega's suggestion of professional help acted upon?
The next day, June 20th, Kenny, Michael's then manager Frank DiLeo, Murray and Phillips met at Michael's rented Carolwood house. Their attitude was that Michael needed 'tough love' in order to gee him up and get him back to rehearsals. Michael was asked about the missed rehearsals, and alarmingly, Murray answered for Michael and said he was in good health. If I had been at the meeting, I would have been concerned by this - why would the doctor need to respond on behalf of Michael - was Michael at the mercy of the doctor, or were they both trying to cover something up? If I had seen Michael the day before, wrapped in a blanket on a Summer's day, I would not have believed there was nothing wrong. Are showbusiness people in Hollyood so used to turning a blind eye to artists' problems, that they no longer can see when someone is physically unfit to perform? Can they not tell the difference between genuine illness and laziness? After receiving these reassurances, Phillips and co. left the house, seemingly confident that the rehearsals would now get back on track. Unbelievable.
You may ask yourself, why Michael himself did not ask for some time to recover. It may have been because, as a younger performer, he would have been told that the show must go on. I have some personal experience of this as a child attending ballet school. Every year we put on a show at Christmas, and we were told that if anything went wrong onstage, we were to carry on and not let the audience know that there was a problem, and we had to finish the scene and sort out the problem after we left the stage. It was also made clear that if we were unwell and could not go onstage on the day of the show, that we would be letting everyone in the show down, and that an understudy would have to be found which would be a great inconvenience to everybody. People seemed to be angry that you would dare to fall ill, as if you were doing so just to annoy them. Professional dancers will often go onstage when sick, because they fear the consequences of 'letting everyone down'. Most dance companies have a dedicated physiotherapist, who will advise whether dancing with an injury will cause further physical damage or not. Dancers know that injury may end their careers, so they do listen to the physiotherapists advice. It may be that AEG Live thought that this was the kind of service that Murray was performing for Michael, advising him how to stay healthy when he was tired or injured. But most performers are not likely to readily say 'I can't go on tonight'. Especially when, as with Michael, they are solo performers, and there is no one to understudy them! They know that if they do not turn up at rehearsal or for a show, that everyone in the show will be sent home, and a paying audience will have their money refunded.
So if Michael was not going to ask for help, and the big guns running 'This Is It' were washing their hands of responsibility, who was left to help Michael?
Michael may not have realised that he would not be able to cope, when he signed the 'This Is It' contract in January 2009. He hadn't performed a series of concerts for 12 years, but he would have no reason to think he couldn't do it again. Even if he did have doubts, he needed the cash, and from the year 2000 music sales for any artist no longer generated good revenues, so he was forced to do live shows, which had proved to be successful money makers for other artists. He agreed, knowing that doctors had warned him not to tour again, as it would not be good for his health. The doctors knew that Michael often did not eat or drink enough during tours, and he became dehydrated and lost a lot of weight.
Some of the comments that Randy Phillips made about Michael during the 'This Is It' rehearsals, suggest to me that he has no idea of the physical and emotional pressure on a performer. From personal experience, I can assure you that giving an electrifying performance is not only physically but also emotionally draining. Even if Michael was only rehearsing and not performing full out, he was still the only person who could say 'yes, the music is played correctly', or' no, you aren't doing that dance routine correctly', because he wrote nearly all the music and helped create the iconic dance moves. He had to do all that extra work on top of rehearsing his own performance. It's a lot to take on, especially when you know you have to do it, even though it will probably make you ill.
I am sure that once he started rehearsals in April, he would begin to feel the pain of any old injuries, and if he had not recovered from the corporate bullying that I believe he suffered, he could be stressed, fearful and riddled with self-doubt. As a seasoned performer, he would know that this was not the way he should be feeling, and he may have worried that couldn't continue like that. Maybe that is why he was asking for the vitamin injections? Maybe when they did not help, he turned to Propofol, just to get some sleep?
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that by June, he was showing signs of being unwell, and Ortega and Phillips knew it. Phillips seems to think Michael is being lazy, and Ortega saw signs of problems, but didn't follow through and make sure that Michael had professional help.
As well as the Lloyds of London lawsuit, there is also the Jackson family wrongful-death lawsuit, which is going to trial to look at whether AEG Live were negligent in hiring Dr Murray, starting April 2. Let's see what else it reveals.
"There is a triable issue of fact as to whether it was foreseeable that such a physician under strong financial pressure may compromise his Hippocratic Oath and do what was known by AEG Live's executives to be an unfortunate practice in the entertainment industry for financial gain," Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos wrote in her order, which became public on March 1.
"Triable issues of fact exist as to whether it could have been foreseeable that Dr. Murray would engage in the exact behavior alleged here: Dr. Murray's provision of drugs which led to Decedent's death," she said.
The AEG contract was for a maximum of 31 concerts between July 26 and September 30 2009, and the first leg had to be a minimum of 18 shows. A greater number of shows could be agreed, but the initial contract was as stated above, UNLESS AEG could prove that more shows were needed in order to recoup the advances it paid to Michael.
We now know from the cancellation policy that the Specified Costs, Expenses and Commitments estimated to have been spent by AEG and/or The Michael Jackson Company before the shows began, were $17.5m. After 13 shows (estimated income of $18,643,040) this money would have been recouped, and the concerts would be in profit.
So this means that the minimum of 18 shows in the contract were more than enough to cover the costs estimated to be spent before the shows began.
This Is It had sold out 50 concerts.
Where is the written contract for the additional 19 shows, making it up to 50? I certainly have not seen or heard of one, so to my mind that suggests that either the agreement was verbal, or the contract for the 19 shows is being kept under wraps for now.
The other fact that seems to have gone unnoticed by a lot of fans, is that the cancellation policy covered costs spent by AEG and/or The Michael Jackson Company, which means that both AEG and The Michael Jackson Company benefit from the policy, not just AEG.
The AEG contract ran until 31 December 2011. Yes you read that right December 2011. Which means, if AEG could prove that more shows were needed to recoup advances, they could keep Michael performing for 2 and a half years. And the contract also allowed for AEG to extend beyond 31 December 2011, if there was a World Tour or if the advances had not been paid.
The contract also agreed to pay Dr Tohme Tohme $100,000 per month, under an agreement with Tohme’s company TT international LLC.Tohme’s salary was part of the advances agreement, that was paid out of Michael’s 90% of the profits. If Tohme had not been looking out for Michael’s best interests when the contract was being discussed, he could have kept other promoters offers from reaching Michael. Leonard Rowe says he knew of other concert offers which were for $10-15m PER PERFORMANCE, and would have solved Michael’s financial problems, and Michael would not have had to sign with AEG at all. So was Tohme working against Michael, and was Michael unknowingly paying for the deception financially? We know that one company, Allgood Entertainment, did manage to get their contract in front of Michael, via Frank DiLeo. The meeting between Frank and Allgood was in November 2008, when Tohme was Michael’s manager, not DiLeo. This suggests to me that Allgood were unable to make the offer to Michael directly, so they tried to go via DiLeo. Michael was negotiating with AEG in earnest from around October 2008, and did not sign until January 2009, so perhaps someone was stopping him seeing other offers, in order to ensure the AEG contract was the one that got signed? The Allgood contract was for a Jackson5 reunion for one night in July 2010 – Michael was to get $12-15m for one night. In my other blog here, I calculated that 50 shows for AEG would net Michael approximately $53m, that’s just over $1m per show NOT $12-15m per show! Michael was talking to Allgood about their contract in May 2009, that’s AFTER he’d signed the AEG contract and when he was in the middle of rehearsals for This Is It. The story goes that he rejected the idea, because Allgood wanted pay-per-view and Michael didn’t like pay-per-view. I think Michael wanted to cancel or postpone some or all of the This Is It concerts, until after the Allgood concert, but he was told ‘No’ by AEG.
Another company, Citadel Limited, were also in negotiations with DiLeo in the first quarter of 2009, for a musical event in Trinidad and Tobago, featuring Michael, to take place in the last quarter of 2009. The first leg of the This Is It concerts would have finished in September, so this is feasible. DiLeo had signed a Binder Agreement, and Citadel had wired him a total of $300,000 as part of this agreement. After 25 June 2009, Citadel wanted their money back, and filed a lawsuit against DiLeo to recoup it. It is not clear exactly when DiLeo started to work for Michael again, but I would guess maybe March 2009.
So could Michael have gotten himself out of the AEG contract? Leonard Rowe says that even if Michael had filed for bankruptcy, if his liabilities were greater than his assets, he would have lost his entire fortune to AEG. Personally, I don’t think that is true. Michael could have cancelled the concerts, because he was covered by the cancellation policy, under specific terms. But the problem with cancelling was that, after years of attack by the media, Michael’s professional image was already badly damaged, and I believe that cancelling the concerts would have destroyed him. Michael would have walked away with no money to show for months of preparation, or even made a loss.
There is another large flaw in Rowe’s assumptions. He assumes that all Michael’s assets were part of his estate, and therefore AEG could force Michael into bankruptcy in order to get hold of the assets. But I have done some research and found that Michael’s major assets were all in bankruptcy remote trusts, which fall outside of the estate. Once in a trust, the assets no longer belong to Michael Jackson, and Michael cannot be forced to hand them over to creditors. I don’t know if AEG were aware of this, but Michael surely was.
Leonard says in his book that the AEG contract was despicable, and that it wouldn’t have happened on his watch. He claims the reason he was fired was that Randy Phillips was afraid he would expose the nature of the contract. Leonard has a letter showing that Michael wanted him to oversee the finances of the O2 shows. This was 25th March 2009, 3 months AFTER the contract was signed. So why did Leonard not get hold of the contract and start addressing his concerns to Michael? If he was overseeing the O2 finances, surely the starting point would be to understand the contract? Without understanding that, how could he understand Michael’s finances? He says he had found out about AEGs ticket scalping and brought it up at a meeting with AEG in May. So why did Leonard do nothing about the contract between being hired in March and May? Well, perhaps Michael didn’t want Leonard to have anything to do with the concert finances. Perhaps the 15 May meeting was about the problems with the concert scheduling? Perhaps Michael realised that Leonard wasn’t able to negotiate effectively with AEG, and so replaced him with Frank DiLeo?
Was the AEG contract good or bad? Financially, I think the AEG contract was good for Michael. AEG don’t seem to be profiting hugely at Michael’s expense.
But I do think Michael had problems with AEG, and I think those problems were to do with mounting the concerts. I have heard rumblings that the costume designer, the choreographer and the producer were planning the show without Michael’s input. Michael didn’t have the control he had had over his other concerts. This must have added to the huge pressure already on Michael, who as a solo artist, was the only person who could oversee the music, the songs and the choreography, and who in addition had to prepare his own performance. I also believe that some of the people working on This Is It, who had worked with Michael before, knew that he was not well in the last few weeks. I think they are afraid to speak the truth for fear of being landed with a wrongful death lawsuit, or of being blackballed. I think that explains the inconsistencies in the stories these people have told in interviews since June 25 2009, and is why so many people have lied about so many things. I think the Jackson family know, hence the AEG lawsuit.
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