Day 20 of the AEG trial: The company had banned talk about Michael Jackson’s weakness
The Thursday session continued in court with Paul Gongwer, an AEG company executive, present.
He said that yesterday he had met with his lawyers again to refresh his memory.
Brian Panish, the Jackson family attorney, resumed questioning Gongwer after he took the stand.
Panish: “Was the company concerned about Michael Jackson’s health?”
Gongwer: “If he was sick, we would definitely have been concerned.”
This company executive said that by reading the emails presented in court yesterday, he learned about Michael’s illness, but he had not taken on any particular concern. When Hagedal (tour production manager) wrote in an email that Michael’s health was getting worse day by day, Gongwer did not take on even a bit of worry.
Gongwer: “I didn’t see things the way he (Hagedal) saw them.”
On June 15, 2009, Hagedal, in response to an email from Travis Payne, a choreographer who was concerned about Michael’s weight loss, wrote that a new diet should be considered for him.
Hagedal then wrote to Gongwer in an email that they should strengthen Michael with a lot of greasy, high-calorie foods: “He needs a number of cheeseburgers with a few pieces of Wisconsin cheese and a couple of dozen sausages and broth.”
Panish asked Gongwer whether he thought that email was funny at the time. Gongwer answered yes.
Panish: “Was he (Hagedal) joking in that situation?”
Gongwer: “I think so.”
Panish: “Did you think it was funny?”
Gongwer: “Yes.”
Panish: “Was Mr. Hagedal joking about this?”
Gongwer: “To some extent.”
Here, Panish asked about the details of Gongwer’s contract with AEG. Gongwer said he hadn’t read it for twelve or thirteen years. Panish asked him that if, due to a mistake he had made (neglecting Michael’s condition), the company were found guilty in court, who would pay damages to the Jackson family? Gongwer answered: “The company.” He added that the company could, of course, sue him. Panish asked how much the company could afford to pay damages, and Gongwer said he didn’t know. Panish emphasized that the company could pay damages in many ways, and Gongwer pointed out that the company uses insurance.
Panish then returned to the emails.
Randy Phillips, AEG’s CEO, in an email to Kenny Ortega, who was very worried about Michael, had written: “Dr. Murray doesn’t need this tour (= he doesn’t need the money) and he is unbiased and ethical.”
(Completely the opposite: Dr. Murray actually needed the money and was not unbiased or ethical. He had heavy debts and had become the father of seven children by eight women. He was a married man who couldn’t afford the monthly costs of his many children.)
Panish: “Is Mr. Phillips unbiased and ethical?”
Gongwer: “I think he is.”
Without having done any review or investigation into Dr. Murray’s background, Randy Phillips had told Kenny Ortega in his email: “We checked everything. Dr. Murray is an extremely successful doctor.”
Panish: “Was what Mr. Phillips said based on ethics?”
Gongwer: “I don’t know what information Mr. Phillips had at that time.”
Panish: “Is the main priority that the show must go on no matter what?”
Gongwer: “I don’t know.”
Panish: “What is the priority?”
Gongwer: “To do the right thing.”
Panish raised again an email from John Branca, Michael’s attorney, in which he wrote that he had found a trusted therapist for MJ. In that email, John Branca had asked whether Michael had a drug consumption problem.
Gongwer explained: “This refers to a meeting that was about to happen, and I had waited to see what the result would be. I didn’t think there was a drug problem. During all the time I worked with him on this tour, I only saw it once—when he returned from his doctor’s office and was affected by medication and couldn’t speak well.”
He said he didn’t know whether Dr. Klein was injecting Michael with medication. When his attorney asked whether he had asked Klein about it, Gongwer answered no.
Gongwer: “He was Michael’s doctor, and this had nothing to do with me.”
Michael was sick at the June 19 rehearsal session. The next day, a meeting was held at his home to discuss it. Gongwer said Michael rested for a few days and then, on June 23 and 24, showed up with full strength at rehearsal sessions and did great. Michael died the following day at noon.
On the day Michael died, Gongwer was insisting in an email to the insurance company that they had to obtain health insurance; otherwise, they would break the entire contract with insurance. If that contract had been signed, then in case Michael became ill, the insurance would pay the tour’s damages. On the stand, Gongwer said he didn’t know why he had insisted on signing the health insurance contract that day.
On the other hand, on the same day, Randy Phillips was negotiating to sign a life insurance contract with an insurance company. This insurance would guarantee tour damages in the event of Michael’s death.
Gongwer said he didn’t give much importance to the insurance. He also said he couldn’t remember anything.
The day Michael passed away, Phillips called Gongwer and said to get to Michael’s home as soon as possible, as if something had happened. Randy followed the ambulance that was taking Michael to UCLA hospital.
In his second call, Phillips informed Gongwer that Michael was dead. Gongwer went to the Staples Center, where the tour rehearsals were held, to speak with Kenny Ortega, the director.
Panish: “Were you upset about Mr. Jackson’s death?”
Gongwer: “Very much.”
Gongwer considered Michael as a business partner, not a friend.
“He was my business partner. We didn’t spend time like two friends.”
Panish asked Gongwer about an email in which Phillips had instructed him to remove from the documentary This Is It very thin images of Michael wearing a red jacket. Gongwer said he remembered that email. In the previously recorded interrogation video that was played in court today, he had said he didn’t remember anything about that email.
Panish: “Have you changed your testimony?”
Gongwer: “No. I saw that email when I was preparing for court.”
In that email, Phillips made a typographical error and wrote “thin” meaning “thin” as “think” meaning “to think.” In the interrogation video, when the Jacksons’ attorney asked Gongwer what “think” meant, he said he didn’t know. But today in court, he accepted that Phillips meant “thin.”
After Michael’s death on August 9, 2009, Phillips had written in an email: “Make sure you remove all MJ images where he is wearing the red leather jacket and taken in the ‘sound stage’ from the documentary. He looks very thin and like a skeleton.”
Gongwer had responded: “Okay, when it’s ready I’ll take a look.”
In court, Gongwer said that no changes were made to the documentary based on Phillips’s instructions.
Gongwer said that after Michael’s death, he had not tried to hide that Michael was fully present in rehearsals and involved in the work. Panish asked him about an email in which he instructed the band musicians, singers, and dancers to speak positively in interviews.
A few days after Michael’s death, on July 9, Gongwer wrote in an email to Joan Tominaga, the coordinator of the tour’s music group: “We have no problem interviewing musicians, singers, and dancers. We only want them to say positive things and say that MJ was active and focused on the work, and that the skinny man that some people are trying to portray isn’t there.”
Panish: “You told them what not to say, didn’t you?”
Gongwer: “I asked them to speak positively.”
Panish attacked him: “And not to say that Michael was thin!”
Gongwer accepted.
Panish: “So as the producer of that documentary, you controlled the message that this film conveyed.”
Gongwer: “I don’t think so.”
Panish asked about the sales of TII tour tickets. He said that for each concert, fifteen thousand tickets were available. Ticket sales revenue for each concert would be equal to 1.5 million dollars, and 31 concerts would bring in 47 million dollars. Gongwer said that all the tickets sold out at “the speed of light.”
“A higher speed than that wasn’t possible for computers.”
The tickets sold out in March. The money from the ticket sales was in the company’s hands. The venue where the concerts were held was owned by the company, so Michael didn’t have to pay for the location.
Regarding Michael, Gongwer said: “He had enormous potential.”
Panish: “Without limits?”
Gongwer: “If he had the will to work hard, he would do well.”
Panish: “Was TII supposed to become a worldwide tour?”
Gongwer: “No. The only thing we knew was that fifty concerts would be held in London. Michael hadn’t agreed to anything else.”
This is while, in 2011, during his testimony in the Michael Jackson murder case against Dr. Murray, Gongwer had said that TII was supposed to become a worldwide tour.
Panish: “When all the tickets sold out, how many people were still standing in line?”
Gongwer: “250,000 people were still in line to buy tickets, which would have been enough for fifty more concerts.”
Brian Panish ended his questioning, and Marvin Pontam, the company’s attorney, began asking Gongwer questions.
Pontam: “Were you ever sued because of someone’s death?”
Gongwer: “No.”
Pontam: “How do you feel?”
Gongwer: “It’s hard—it’s very stressful.”
Pontam: “Are you anxious?”
Gongwer: “Yes.”
Pontam asked about Gongwer’s memory, and Gongwer said his memory was good.
Pontam tried to restore Gongwer’s lost credibility:
Pontam: “Why didn’t you remember the emails?”
Gongwer: “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them.”
He said that sometimes he was so busy that he didn’t even read those emails. He explained that he received hundreds of emails every day.
Pontam: “Did you try to give your best testimony?”
Gongwer: “Yes.”
On Tuesday, Brian Panish had shown an email from Gongwer in court: “When Elvis died, I was busy preparing his tour (referring to Michael’s death, which also happened during tour preparations), so in a way I knew I should expect it. But still, I was shocked.”
Gongwer was a man in his twenties who had worked for Elvis Presley but had never met him.
Today, during questioning with Marvin Pontam, Gongwer said that his point wasn’t that he expected Michael to die like Elvis. He said his reference was to the tour being disrupted and many people being left jobless because of the tour’s cancellation.
Gongwer said that after Michael’s death, his foundation took control of everything and the situation became completely different.
When one of Gongwer’s friends asked him what his plans were after Michael’s death, he had answered that they needed to repair and make up for the losses that had been incurred.
When Panish asked the cause of Michael’s death, Gongwer said: “MJ died from propofol abuse, not from illness or malnutrition.”
He said that before Michael’s death, he didn’t know what propofol was.
Gongwer also said that until Elvis’s death, he had been unaware of his drug problem. Colonel Parker, Elvis’s manager, had said he wouldn’t be performing for a while, but Gongwer didn’t know the reason.
In court today, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson once again reached a point of separation. There are many connections between the two. Two kings, two idols, with deaths that were almost similar—Elvis with drug use and Michael with an injection of anesthesia. Michael was also Elvis’s son-in-law.
Earlier in court, Gongwer had said that Elvis died from drug use, but today when his own attorney asked him, he said that Elvis’s death was due to a prior failure. Presley actually died in 1977 at age 42 from an overdose in his home bathroom. Drug use caused his cardiac arrest. The way the King of Rock and Roll died is connected to the AEG case because the Jackson family’s lawyers are trying to show that, given Gongwer’s experience of Elvis’s death from drug abuse, he should have had more awareness of Michael’s condition—who was a victim of abuse of sedatives and sleeping pills.
Gongwer had worked on the grand memorial ceremony for Michael in July 2009 at the Staples Center. He was responsible for ticket sales and worked closely with the Jackson family. He said he had not been paid for this service.
Pontam asked about Gongwer’s history of knowing Michael.
Gongwer first saw Michael in Las Vegas. Michael had asked to meet with Colonel Parker. Steve Wynn’s brother (the famous American entrepreneur) had called Gongwer and said that Michael wanted to meet Parker.
After that, Gongwer served as tour manager for one of the Jacksons group tours (Michael and his brothers). He handled logistics and travel for the B section. He explained that Section A is the artist. Section B is the music and management group. Section C is the tour crew, and Section D is the film crew. Gongwer said he worked for Michael’s tour, but not for Michael Jackson personally.
After that, in 1992, Gongwer took over the management of Michael’s incredible tour. During that tour, Gongwer personally didn’t interact with Michael; he only saw him on stage during performances.
He also worked with the Jacksons in 2000.
Pontam: “Did the tour doctor accompany the (Danjrous) tour?”
Gongwer: “Yes, two doctors. Dr. Forcest, MJ’s personal doctor, and Dr. Finkelstein.”
Dr. Forcest treated no one other than Michael. Dr. Finkelstein was a general practitioner who served in sections B, C, and D. The tour traveled to cities where they weren’t familiar with the health and sanitation situation, and a doctor was needed. Gongwer said he had never seen another doctor treat Michael. Finkelstein had told Gongwer that he had treated Michael twice. Dr. Forcest wasn’t with the group in Bangkok, so Dr. Finkelstein treated Michael.
Gongwer remembered that the King of Thailand had ordered that MJ had to perform the second concert as well because the king’s friends were expected to come watch. The King of Thailand had stationed his officers with guns outside the tour lodging location to ensure the group wouldn’t leave the city.
Pontam: “During the Dangerous tour, did you find out about MJ’s drug problem?”
Gongwer: “No.”
The Dangerous tour ended in 1993 after canceling some concerts due to Michael’s dependence on painkiller pills. The tour ended in Mexico City without performing some concerts. Gongwer said that when Michael publicly announced the painkiller issue, he became aware of it.
Tomorrow’s session will be half a day.
Source: eMJey.com / AP & NY Daily & ABC & LA Times