Michael was hospitalized and then returned to California

Michael was hospitalized on Wednesday evening, May 31, at a hospital in Indianapolis. He was scheduled to take part in a legal dispute regarding the use of several songs in one of his albums. Stuart Backerman announced on local television that Michael said he wanted to return home to California, and for that reason, after leaving the hospital, he returned to Los Angeles at about 8:30 p.m. local time on a private jet. Brian Oxman, the attorney for the Jackson family, said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press that Michael “wasn’t feeling well and had become very weak. In the past, he hadn’t been eating enough. At the same time, he was very worried about the legal dispute. He doesn’t like these issues, and facing the legal cases that are on his shoulders makes him sick.” Mr. Backerman told the Indy Star that “he felt weak and tired, and with each hour things got worse.” The legal dispute mentioned relates to a claim by Gordon Keith, the man who brought Jackson Five into Steeltown Records in 1967. Keith has claimed that he received no money for the songs that ended up on the album Pre-HIStory: The Lost Steeltown Records. That album was released in 1996. Michael’s previously scheduled meeting at his birthplace in Gary in the northwest of Indiana and at the house where he grew up was canceled. Backerman told Indy Star that “it was supposed to be a very positive, warm, and emotional celebration. Believe me, he really wanted the event to happen.”