Los Angeles (CNN) — Michael Jackson’s last concert promoter is trying Wednesday to convince a jury that it is not responsible for the pop icon’s death.
AEG Live attorney Marvin Putnam has four hours Wednesday to deliver his closing arguments in the trial of the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Jackson’s mother and three children.
“Plaintiffs want you to hold a concert promoter liable for Michael Jackson’s overdose in his bedroom at night, behind locked doors on June 25, 2009,” Putnam told jurors. “An overdose of the drug administered to Mr. Jackson by his longtime doctor — Dr. Murray — who he’d been seeing for years, a doctor he brought to Los Angeles from Las Vegas.”
When the trial began five months ago, Putnam warned he would show “ugly stuff” and reveal Jackson’s “deepest, darkest secret.”
The revelations that jurors heard from 58 witnesses over 83 days of testimony spanning 21 weeks included details of Jackson’s drug use and his shopping for a doctor to give him the surgical anesthetic propofol that he thought would give him sleep.
“He was nearly half a billion dollars in debt,” Putnam argued Wednesday. “His mother’s house was near foreclosure, we didn’t know that then. What else do we know now? That Mr. Jackson spent decades shopping for doctors to give him the painkillers he wanted. Mr. Jackson made sure we didn’t know that.”
Brian Panish, the lead lawyer for Jackson’s mother and three children, conceded in his closing Tuesday that the singer may have some fault for his own death, but said “it’s about shared responsibility.”
Jackson did use prescription painkillers and was warned that using propofol at home to sleep was risky, “but he never had a problem until Dr. Conrad Murray was working and until Conrad Murray negotiated with AEG Live,” Panish argued.
The AEG Live lawyer, Putnam, argued Wednesday that Jackson should take the full blame. “The sad truth is Mr. Jackson’s death was caused by his choices and it would have happened no matter what — with or without AEG Live.”
The Jackson family lawyer urged jurors to award the family between $1 billion and $2 billion in damages for its share of liability in Jackson’s death — to replace what he would have earned touring, had he lived, and for the personal suffering from the loss of a son and father.
Read More: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/25/showbiz/michael-jackson-death-trial/?hpt=en_c1
Source: CNN / MJ-Upbeat.com
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