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Michael Jackson wrongful death trial: Emails reflect AEG’s fears about singer … – OregonLive.com

In September 2011, Paul Gongaware, concert promoter and producer on Michael Jackson’s ill-fated “This Is It” tour, testifies at Dr. Conrad Murray’s involuntary manslaughter trial.The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Jurors hearing a lawsuit against concert giant AEG Live LLC have been shown emails in which top company executives expressed fears about Michael Jackson’s health and the amount of time they had to get the singer prepared for his ill-fated series of comeback tours.
The messages were displayed Wednesday during testimony from AEG Live co-CEO Paul Gongaware, who at one point sent his boss’s assistant a message stating the show was giving him nightmares and causing him to break out in cold sweats at night.
Gongaware testified that he was joking, but it was just one of several messages expressing concerns about Jackson’s health. Another message from Randy Phillips, the top-ranking executive at AEG Live, wrote after one of Jackson’s missed rehearsals that, “we are running out of time.
“That is my biggest fear,” Phillips wrote to Gongaware and the CEO of AEG Live’s parent company, Anschutz Entertainment Group, on June 20, 2009, five days before Jackson’s death.
Gongaware said he didn’t agree with Phillips’ assessment. “He may have said that, but I didn’t agree with that,” Gongaware testified.
His testimony came under questioning by an attorney for Jackson’s mother, who is suing AEG Live and claims it failed to properly investigate the doctor convicted of causing her son’s death. Gongaware and Phillips are also named as defendants in the case.
AEG denies that it hired former cardiologist Conrad Murray, or could have foreseen the singer’s death. The company’s defense attorneys have not yet questioned Gongaware on the stand.
The company’s defense attorney, Marvin [...]

By jwj|May 30th, 2013|News|Comments Off|

In Yolo wrongful-death suit, jurors must ask: What about the knife? – Sacramento Bee

As jury deliberations get under way Monday in the civil trial over the fatal shooting of Luis Gutierrez by a Yolo County sheriff’s deputy in 2009, it may all come down to “the knife” – a key piece of evidence that was the 500-pound gorilla in the courtroom.
Two deputies, including the shooter, testified that the 26-year-old Gutierrez was threatening sheriff’s Sgt. Dale Johnson with a folding pocketknife at close range, and lethal force was all that was left for them to defend themselves.
But one witness testified in Sacramento federal court that Gutierrez definitely did not have a knife. Another said she also saw no knife, but her attention was not focused on Gutierrez’s hands.
A knife like the one described by Johnson and the shooter, Deputy Hernan Oviedo, was found at the scene and collected by Woodland police.
The theory of attorneys who represent Gutierrez’s parents, Irma and Jose Gutierrez, in a civil rights and wrongful-death lawsuit against the county, Johnson, Oviedo, and a third deputy is that the knife admitted as evidence is a “throw down” – a knife that was thrown or dropped at the scene after Gutierrez was killed.
The jury’s verdict likely will swing on whether the plaintiffs’ lawyers have sown enough doubt in jurors’ minds that Gutierrez did not have the knife when the shooting occurred.
If there was no knife when Oviedo fired the fatal shot, either Gutierrez would be alive today or his death would be indefensible.
Even the defense’s police practices expert agreed.
The shooting “would be uncalled for, yes, if he did not have a knife in his hand and was not threatening any of the officers,” Massad Ayoob testified.
There is no [...]

By jwj|October 22nd, 2012|News|Comments Off|