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 [...]