An attorney for the concert promotion company AEG Live warned jurors they would see a very different view of the charismatic Michael Jackson as the company seeks to prove it was not liable for the star’s death.
Marvin Putnam, making his opening statement in what is expected to be an emotional wrongful death trial, said AEG officials had no idea that Jackson was taking the surgical anesthetic that led to his death.
He said the three-month civil case would bring to light “some ugly stuff” about the singer’s private behavior.
“The public Michael Jackson was very different from the private Michael Jackson,” Putnam said. “He erected a wall between himself and his family. Even his family wasn’t sure what was going on at the house.”
He said Jackson had been using the powerful anesthetic propofol for years to help him sleep “and almost no one knew.”
“AEG had no idea. It was going on behind locked doors” Putnam said
The “Thriller” singer’s mother, Katherine, is suing privately held AEG Live, promoters of a never-realized series of comeback concerts by Jackson, for negligence in hiring Dr. Conrad Murray as his personal physician.
Brian Panish, representing Jackson’s family, said AEG Live ignored red flags when it hired Murray and should have been aware that the singer had addiction problems years before he agreed to perform the concerts.
Jackson, 50, drowning in debt and seeking to rebuild a reputation damaged by his 2005 trial and acquittal on child molestation charges, died in Los Angeles in June 2009. (Reuters)
