The trial has yet to start but already the fans, the satellite trucks and the cameras have staked out the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles for what promises to be Michael Jackson’s last and most melancholy show.
Jackson died four years ago, but rival legal teams are preparing to pitch competing versions of his demise in a $40 billion lawsuit that will put Jackson’s private and public dramas back in the spotlight.
A bizarre jailhouse serenade on CNN on Tuesday night by Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted in Jackson’s death, augured the potentially macabre circus to come. The disgraced doctor sang Nat King Cole’s The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot during an interview with Anderson Cooper to stress his love for Jackson.
Details of Jackson’s drug-taking, mental state and lowest moments, including the child molestation charges, are due to be scrutinized anew in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Jackson’s mother, Katherine, against the concert promoter, AEG Live.
She claims the company was negligent in hiring Murray to care for her son, and pressured Jackson to breaking point while he prepared for a planned series of 50 This Is It comeback shows starting in July 2009 in London. The $40 billion figure is for forfeited earnings and other damages.
Read more: Guardian.co.uk
