Day 24 of the AEG trial: Randy Phillips’s contradictory statements

In today’s session, Brian Panish—attorney for Katherine Jackson—tried to show the contradictions in Randy Phillips’s statements, the company’s CEO, during interrogations and his testimony in court. Panish asked Phillips which of his answers was correct: what he said during interrogations, or what he testified to in court.

Phillips responded: “Do you want the truth, or what I testified?”

Panish asked about the mechanism of AEG Live. Phillips said the company operates as a subsidiary of the parent company AEG (The Anschutz Corporation, founded by Phillips’s father, Phil Anschutz, in 1958). He said he didn’t know exactly who owned AEG Live.

Panish presented to the court the minutes of the board meeting dated May 26, 2009, in which the tour This Is It with Michael Jackson was discussed. He also showed part of Phillips’s video interview with Sky News, in which he said the company had hired Dr. Murray. Phillips explained that he meant AEG had hired him on Michael’s behalf. He said AEG’s media director arranged his interviews with news networks after Michael’s death. Each interview was different, but the main goal was to say that the company had hired Dr. Murray on Michael’s behalf.

Phillips was asked about meeting Dr. Murray at Michael’s home. He said Michael’s weight had been discussed in at least one of the meetings. He wasn’t sure about the dates of the meetings and said the discussion about his weight might have taken place over two sessions. Panish used a report prepared by police after Phillips’s interrogation to help his memory.

Phillips said there were mistakes in that report, and Panish asked the witness to go through them carefully. At this moment, the judge reminded them that they didn’t need to review the report line by line. Phillips then focused on the two parts he claimed were incorrect. He pointed to a part of the police report that says: “Randy Phillips stated that Kenny Ortega upset Michael, and that Dr. Murray reprimanded Randy and told him that you’re not a doctor—don’t interfere.” Phillips said that writing doesn’t make sense and explained that in reality he had told police: “Dr. Murray stepped in and reprimanded Kenny Ortega and told him not to make medical claims.”

He pointed out another error: “Phillips/Gongwer prepared two of MJ’s tours, but Phillips said he had no involvement in that.” Phillips explained that Gongwer worked with Michael, not him.

This interrogation was not recorded by police at the request of AEG’s lawyers.

Regarding Michael’s absence from meetings, Phillips said: “MJ participated in rehearsals, but Kenny believed his presence wasn’t enough.”

Phillips recalled a phone call with Dr. Murray on June 20, 2009 that lasted 25 minutes. He said he knew exactly how many times he had spoken with Dr. Murray because Panish had requested it to check his phone calls. Panish said he had never done such a thing, and that it was the Los Angeles police who had made that request.

In his interrogation, Phillips had said that Gongwer never told him anything about the email in which it said, “This is AEG that pays Murray’s money, not MJ,” and that he hadn’t received an email about that. In his interrogation, he said he was seeing the email for the first time. Then, when Panish showed that a copy of that email had been forwarded by Gongwer to Frank DeLeo and Phillips at the same time, Phillips said he didn’t remember receiving it. But today, on the stand, Phillips said he had received the email.

Panish warned Phillips that so far he had changed his testimony three times on this matter. Phillips said each time he had given a similar answer, but in different ways.

Phillips: “Actually, I don’t remember reading that email about Paul. I cared more about Kenny’s email.” At that point, it looked like members of the jury were getting tired of Phillips’s evasiveness.

Panish displayed an email dated June 17, 2009 that had been sent from Phillips to Dr. Teme, Michael’s dismissed manager. On that date, Teme had been fired from Michael’s team, but Phillips was still reporting to him! The email said:

“Yesterday, Kenny Ortega, Gongwer, DeLeo, his doctor from Vegas named Conrad, and I arranged a meeting to intervene and ask him (Michael) to focus on his work and be present in rehearsals. Getting him to participate is difficult and urgent because we only have 20 days until the first concert.”

On the stand, Phillips said they didn’t intend to intervene; it was just a meeting and had nothing to do with Michael’s drug use.

Panish asked whether Michael had fired Teme. Phillips responded: “Yes, but he kept the relationship with him.”

Panish told the court that over the past month, Phillips had met with Teme, and then Panish said to Phillips: “You know people have seen you, right? You know they took pictures of you?”

Phillips agreed that over the past month he had had lunch with Teme in Beverly Hills. Panish asked whether he had asked about Dr. Teme’s testimony. Phillips denied it, but explained that Marvin Pontam, the company’s attorney, was also at the lunch.

When Panish asked what they talked about, Phillips said he didn’t remember: “I don’t remember what I ate at lunch.”

Panish: “I didn’t ask what you ate!”

Phillips then said they talked about Teme’s lawsuit against the Michael Foundation. (The Michael Foundation, in turn, has sued Teme for fraud.) Panish told the court he had a witness who would take the stand and talk about what was exchanged at that lunch meeting. Phillips explained that he had testified at a hearing about Teme’s lawsuit against the Michael Foundation. Teme claims his rights were not paid by the Foundation. Panish asked whether he had testified in Teme’s favor at that hearing. Phillips said he had been neutral.

Panish: “Isn’t it true that when Dr. Murray was hired, nobody was working as Michael’s tour manager?”Phillips: “I believe Frank DeLeo was the tour manager.”

He continued that AEG had paid DeLeo $50,000 on Michael’s behalf.

Phillips explained that the only thing he knew about Dr. Teme in January 2009 was that he served as a consultant for Cloney Capital and represented Michael. Teme had no background in the music industry.

Phillips: “When it came to Michael and his consultants, we needed scheduling.”

Phillips said he first met Dr. Teme during a meeting in Century City, at Cloney Capital’s office. This friendship was between Phil Anschutz, the owner of AEG Live, and one of Cloney Capital’s partners—who ended up with the contract to perform 50 concerts on the This Is It tour with Michael Jackson.

Panish asked a question that all of us are thinking: “What is Dr. Teme? Is he a doctor or does he have a doctorate?” But Phillips’s answer was very disappointing. He said that although he had met Teme 25 times, he had never asked him about it.

Panish asked about Teme’s monthly salary of $100,000. That contract was arranged between Teme, AEG, and Michael. Phillips said he only remembered one other case where the company paid the artist’s manager’s salary. (AEG paid the manager salary for Bon Jovi.) Phillips said paying Michael’s manager’s wages by the company was one of Michael’s standards throughout his career.

Randy Phillips denied the claim that he had told Sharon Osbourne (the wife of Ozzy Osbourne, a rock music legend) that AEG kept the money from TII ticket sales, saying: “That’s the dumbest thing in the world.” At the time, Randy and Sharon lived in the same building, and Phillips had run into Sharon in the building lobby by chance. He described their conversation as nothing more than a greeting and goodbye.

“He asked me how things were. I said it’s difficult, but we’ll get through it.”

Phillips said 93% of the price of tickets sold was refunded to buyers after the tour was canceled (following Michael’s death). 7 to 8% of people decided to keep the tickets as souvenirs and didn’t request their money. In total, out of $75 million in ticket sales revenue, AEG kept more than $5 million. Phillips said they turned that amount over to the Michael Foundation.

Source: eMJey.com / AP & ABC News