The Jackson family is seeking $40 billion in damages for the wrongful death of Michael Jackson from AEG Live, the entertainment company behind his final tour.
Concert giant AEG Live callously chose fortune over Michael Jackson’s fitness, bullying a doctor to prop up the drug-addled superstar at any cost for his final tour, a lawyer for the singer’s heirs said Monday.
Attorney Brian Panish opened the mega-bucks wrongful-death trial on behalf of the King of Pop’s family, charging the music icon’s 2009 death was caused by “ruthless” concert promoters blinded by ambition to outdo their competition.
To bolster his case, Panish presented the jury with emails showing AEG officials knew of Jackson’s personal demons and his downward spiral.
One official called Jackson an “emotionally paralyzed mess riddled with self-loathing and doubt.”
“They didn’t care who got lost in the wash,” Panish said during a blistering opening argument in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Jackson’s 82-year-old mother, Katherine, sat in the courtroom’s front row, just feet from the jury box. She stared stoically and straight ahead as her dead son was portrayed as the “greatest entertainer of all time” and a loving son, but also as an out-of-control prescription junkie afraid to go on stage.
She dabbed her eyes, choking back tears, as Panish read a letter Michael had titled, “Mother My Guardian Angel.”
“All my success has been based on the fact that I wanted to make my mother proud, to win her smile and approval,” Jackson wrote in the letter.
Videos of Michael dancing days before his death were played for the jury and a recording of him singing “You Are My Life” — a lullaby he wrote for his children — filled the courtroom.
Via nydailynews
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