If I've offended anyone here with anything I've said I apologize sincerely as that was not my intention at all.
I really did not intend to cause any problems here, and I do hope to stick around for a while. I was apprehensive about posting at first but I did so with no other intention than to give some insight as to what we saw on the jury and to let you all know that we came away from the trial with so much admiration for Michael the person.
I always prefer direct information over speculation if it is available to me, and that is all I wanted to provide here. I understand there will be disagreements about the verdict and I don't mind that or take that personally, but calling my character or conscience into question is completely uncalled for and I refuse to engage in that kind of discussion.
Thanks for all your replies. I understand how you and the jury don't feel what aeg did or didn't do in may/june 09, doesn't rise to the level of liability in this lawsuit. It was a tough lawsuit for the plaintiffs to win and it was aeg's to lose, seeing the cause of mj's death was such an unusual occurrence - an o/d with a doctor present making foreseeability really difficult to prove.
I can't say i agree that aeg showed care and concern, when tii reached a crisis point on 19th june, it seemed phillip's main concern was to keep ortega onside to make sure the shows went ahead, rather than any concern as to what the matter with mj was. I agree with you that ortega seemed to be one of the few genuine ones around mj. It was telling that when asked about mj's petrified state at the press conf in london ortega replied that if he had known about it he wdn't have taken on the tour as he wd have recognised mj wasn't emotionally/psychologically ready, whereas randy's reaction was to slap and scream and increase the number of shows mj had to perform from 31 to 50.
I agree with this. Like I said, I don't think Phillips is a saint. But I also don't think it's fair to hold everyone to the Kenny Ortega standard either. He is a pretty special guy.
Maybe by looking in detail at how mj died on 25 june? I'm just assuming here that you didn't closely follow the murray trial a couple of years back. This trial didn't dwell on murray's negligence, there seemed to me to be an emphasis on the asking of prop by mj being the key to his death rather than how it was administered. Aeg actually made that claim explicit which ticked me off in that it was mj's negligence that led to his own death, not the hiring/supervision of murray, the admin of prop being like russian roulette - at a certain point death was inevitable.
The facts at the murray trial actually showed the quite spectacular breaches in the standard of care that murray had for mj in order for him to die on 25 june - 17 egregious breaches of care. Such negligence that there was discussion in the da's office to prosecute the case as murder 2. It wasnt a series of unfortunate little incidents which added up to a horrible consequence - it was really quite massive violations which would be quite unexpected and inexplicable in a fit and competent general practioner doctor, never mind an anaesthesiologist - it made me wonder why aeg didn't fight the case on foreseeability alone rather than blaming mj. The absence of any written record of what drugs mj had been given and when, the leaving of mj's bedroom for up to an hour whilst mj under a prop drip so murray cd make non urgent social phonecalls , no monitoring equipment whatsoever, long delay in phoning 999, lying to paramedics and hosp staff about what had been given to mj. Mj had the right like we all have to expect basic standard of care and competence from his doc, what went wrong on 25 june was not a complicated set of circs only an anaesthesiologist cd overcome, mj cd prob have been saved by a pair of eyes seeing he needed a chin lift to unblock his airway. I honestly think you would reconsider your 50/50 split between mj/murray if you knew the details.
You are correct that I didn't follow the Murray trial and those details about how Michael died were unknown to me.
I don't believe that MJ taking propofol to sleep was something he did under the impression that it was safe. He was warned repeatedly about and knew full well the dangers of using propofol in an inappropriate manner. So MJ is at least 1% responsible for his death. That seems absurdly low to me considering that he knew he was requesting something that was illegal, unethical, and highly dangerous.
Taking your points into consideration about what CM actually did that morning I do agree that he should hold the majority of responsibility for MJ's death. Whether that amount should be 60 or 75% or whatever seems impossible for me to resolve on my own.
I will say that I had no idea CM was sentenced to only 4 years until I heard it towards the end of the trial, and I damn near fell out of my chair. Even if I were to assign CM 50% of the blame, I would still have given him life in prison. That sentence and the fact that he is getting out in a few weeks is unbelievable to me.
