HIRED ‘KILLER’: Katherine Jackson (right inset) is suing a promoter for hiring Conrad Murray (left inset) to be a Dr. Feelgood for Michael Jackson. (
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Greedy concert promoters turned a blind eye to Michael Jackson’s pill popping and hired him an unscrupulous Doctor Feelgood, lawyers for Jacko’s family said yesterday in the opening statements of a civil trial.
While the late King of Pop’s loved ones blame concert-promoting powerhouse AEG Live for Jackson’s death in 2009, defense lawyers painted a starkly different picture of MJ as a manipulative drug addict who did anything to hide his “deepest, darkest secrets.”
Jackson’s family could win millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars if LA jurors hold AEG responsible for his death.
His physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, has already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and is serving four years behind bars.
“Michael Jackson, Dr. Conrad Murray and AEG Live each played a part in the ultimate result: the death of Michael Jackson,” Jackson family lawyer Brian Panish told the Los Angeles panel of six men and six women, as Michael’s mother, Katherine watched.
A criminal-court jury found that Murray gave insomniac Jackson painkillers and lethal doses of surgical-grade anesthetics, in a dangerous, nonhospital setting.
But AEG lawyers insist that the doctor was totally under Jackson’s control and that the concert promoters had no way of knowing the star was on the powerful anesthetic propofol.
“The truth is, Michael Jackson fooled everyone,” defense lawyer Marvin Putnam said. “He made sure that no one, nobody, knew his deepest darkest secrets.”
Panish said he’ll bring Jackson’s reclusive ex-wife Debbie Rowe to the stand to tell jurors how the pop icon allegedly hid his use of the anesthetic dating back to the ’90s.
“Mr. Jackson got very, very, good at hiding his addiction,” Putnam said yesterday. “He didn’t let anyone see it. Not his staff, not his children. This was the private Michael Jackson.”
Panish argued, though, that money-hungry AEG suits were well aware that the increasingly unstable star had a history of abusing drugs but still brought in the prescription-pad-happy Murray.
Jackson’s reliance on painkillers and other drugs began after his infamous 1984 Pepsi commercial shoot, when his hair caught fire, Panish said.
“People who knew him believed he had a problem with prescription medication,” Panish told the jurors. “Over the years, Michael’s family and people who knew him believed he had a problem with prescription medication.”
The company’s alleged negligence robbed the world — and Jackson’s dependents — of his remarkable talent and earning power, Panish said.
“His [Jackson’s] stirring voice, his musical genius, his creativity and his generosity and his huge heart was extinguished forever,” Panish said.
Jacko was 50 when he died under Murray’s care on June 25, 2009.