Posted: Saturday, January 4, 2014 2:00 pm
By Wave Wire Services | 0 comments
A judge tentatively denied a motion by Katherine Jackson’s attorneys for a new trial of her lawsuit against concert-promoter AEG Live stemming from the 2009 death of her pop superstar son, Michael Jackson, then heard arguments from attorneys Friday before taking the case under submission.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos sent attorneys a 45-page tentative ruling denying the motion by lawyers for the Jackson family matriarch Thursday night, in advance of Friday’s hearing on the issue.
Details of the judge’s ruling were not immediately available.
Palazuelos said she put some of the final touches on her tentative ruling on Wednesday while at the Rose Bowl watching Stanford University — of which she is an alum — lose to Michigan State.
In their court papers, Katherine Jackson's attorneys cited affidavits from jurors and claimed flaws in jury instructions and in the verdict form establish that a different outcome might have occurred Oct. 2 instead of the verdict in favor of the promoters of the singer’s never-realized comeback concerts in London.
“Even if you wanted to find for the plaintiff you really could not,” plaintiffs’ attorney Deborah Chang told Palazuelos during the court hearing.
Chang frequently referred to charts prepared for the hearing as she made her pitch to Palazuelos, saying the lawsuit and trial were unique.
“There will never be another case like this again ... because there will never be another person like Michael Jackson,” Chang said.
Chang said the lawsuit “should have been a negligence case” rather than one that dealt with whether AEG Live appropriately hired, retained and supervised Dr. Conrad Murray as Michael Jackson’s personal physician.
Noting that the arguments during trial were often contentious, Chang called the trial “a fight to the bitter end.”
AEG Live attorneys contended in their court papers that Katherine Jackson’s lawyers are raising new issues and that the juror affidavits filed in support of their motion are inadmissible.
“After failing to prove their case during five months of trial, plaintiffs’ now attack the jury’s unanimous verdict and this court’s rulings,” AEG Live lawyers state in their court papers. “While plaintiffs’ notice of intent to move for new trial raised every single possible statutory ground available under the Code of Civil Procedure ..., plaintiffs now abandon all [their] arguments except irregularity in the proceedings and error in law.”
After nearly 14 hours of deliberations over four days, the six-man, six-woman jury determined that AEG Live did hire Murray as Jackson’s doctor, but it answered “no” to question No. 2, which asked if Murray was “unfit or incompetent to perform the work for which he was hired.”
With that answer, the jury denied any damages to Katherine Jackson and to Michael Jackson’s three children.
Murray, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for Jackson’s death, has since been released from jail. Jackson died June 25, 2009, at age 50 of acute propofol intoxication.
In documents filed earlier this month, the Jackson lawyers claimed that once the jurors found Murray was competent at the time he was hired, the panel could not go any further and examine his subsequent conduct.
“As given, these instructions and the verdict form were misleading and erroneous in that they did not distinguish between a negligent hiring claim and a negligent retention or supervision claim [what the employer knew or should have known during the course of the relationship],'' the Jackson attorneys’ stated in their court papers.
By forcing the jury to stop deliberating after they concluded Murray’s capabilities were up to par when he was hired, the form never allowed the jurors to consider AEG Live’s separate ongoing duties relating to supervision and retention, the Jackson attorneys’ court papers state.
Four trial jurors gave affidavits that Katherine Jackson’s lawyers are citing in support of the new trial motion.
“After sitting through almost six months of the trial in this case, I believed that Mrs. Jackson had proven her case against AEG Live,” one juror said. “Despite this fact, I had no way of voting in favor of the plaintiffs because of the way that the verdict form was worded.”
But according to the AEG Live attorneys’ court papers, Katherine Jackson's attorneys did not argue during trial that question No. 2 was improper.
"Remarkably, plaintiffs’ challenge is based on a question and instruction that plaintiffs specifically requested,” the AEG Live lawyers state in their court papers. "Contrary to the demonstrably false claims in their brief, plaintiffs never objected to question No. 2, never sought to modify it and never claimed that it could somehow result in juror confusion.”
AEG Live attorneys state in their court papers that Katherine Jackson’s lawyers are trying to “muddy the waters” with the four jurors’ sworn statements.
The state’s Evidence Code “flatly forbids [a judge] from considering juror affidavits that concern the mental processes by which the verdict was determined,” the defense attorneys state in their court papers. “Indeed, the court’s consideration of these affidavits would constitute reversible error.”
The defense lawyers further state in their court documents that even if the juror statements were deemed admissible, the plaintiffs’ attorneys have still not shown that their clients probably would have won the case if the questions on the verdict form were different.
Murray was “fit and competent” to take care of Michael Jackson’s general medical needs and had been doing so for the singer and his family, as well as other patients, for years, the AEG Live lawyers state in their court papers.
“There is simply no reason to believe the jury interpreted the verdict form at odds with its plain language and the arguments of the parties,” according to the AEG Live lawyers’ court papers.
Katherine Jackson, 83, sued in September 2010 on behalf of herself and her son’s three children — Michael Jr., Paris-Michael Katherine and Prince Michael — claiming that AEG Live hired Murray to be Jackson’s personal physician and failed to properly supervise him.
Glad you appreciated the humor there. Seriously, though, maybe that was a factor in the idea for the claim the jury was confused--when actually it was that blog, which has been harping on the "there's an AEG plant on the jury--oh, my!" so long it somehow seemed plausible to Chang--enough so she had a dream or nightmare that she actually communicated to jurors. You can't make this stuff up.