Influence of Jackson Verdict Is Limited

by **Admin** Tue Oct 08, 2013 2:25 pm

Influence of Jackson Verdict Is Limited
By BEN SISARIO

October 3, 2013

After finding on Wednesday that the concert promoter A.E.G. Live was not liable in the death of Michael Jackson, members of the jury told reporters that despite their relatively short deliberations — about 13 hours, after a five-month trial — the job was not easy.

“There are really no winners in this,” the foreman, Gregg Barden, said outside California Superior Court in Los Angeles. “This was a difficult decision for us to make.”

In the music industry, however, and for the lucrative businesses that surround Jackson and his legacy, the case leaves a status quo largely unchanged.

Jackson’s 83-year-old mother, Katherine, filed the wrongful death suit, saying A.E.G. Live had negligently hired Dr. Conrad Murray, the cardiologist who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for giving Jackson a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol four years ago. Jurors rejected arguments that Dr. Murray was unfit for his job, which rendered the other questions in the case moot and relieved A.E.G. Live of liability in Jackson’s death.

Music executives and industry commentators said that even if A.E.G. Live had lost the case, it would have had little effect on the larger business.

“No matter which way the jury went, there is really only one thing that is going to change, and that is the amount of legal boilerplate clauses and liability waivers that will be included in future contracts,” said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the trade publication Pollstar.

Jackson was an exception to so many of the usual rules of the music business that few of the case’s central issues apply to other performers, according to several top executives in the concert industry. While a physical trainer or even a masseur is not an uncommon adjunct on a major tour, a doctor attending to only one star, and for such a large fee — $150,000 a month — is all but unheard-of, said these people, who spoke on the condition that they not be named to protect their dealings with A.E.G. Live.

Lawyers for Mrs. Jackson asked for up to $1.5 billion in damages, but losing the case is unlikely to affect her finances. She and Jackson’s three young children are the main beneficiaries of his estate.

While Jackson was nearly $500 million in debt at his death, the estate has lifted his finances with a string of music deals. In its most recent public accounting, through May 2012, the estate said it had earned $475 million since Jackson’s death.

Mrs. Jackson’s lawyers told reporters outside the courthouse on Wednesday that they were “exploring all options” for a possible appeal.

How A.E.G. Live will be affected is unclear. The company, part of a sports and entertainment conglomerate controlled by the billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, won the case, but in the trial the Jacksons went to great lengths to portray its executives as heartless and duplicitous, showing internal e-mails in which Jackson was mocked as “the freak” or described as “a self-loathing emotionally paralyzed mess.”

In his closing arguments, Brian J. Panish, one of Mrs. Jackson’s lawyers, showed a video montage of A.E.G.’s leaders saying “I don’t remember” and “I don’t recall” dozens of times in their depositions.

Dean Crutchfield, a branding consultant, said that A.E.G. Live could repair any damage to its reputation by apologizing for remarks that seemed to insult its clients and concentrating on its business of putting on superstar concerts. Last year, the company sold more than 10 million tickets to its events, according to Pollstar, making it the second-biggest promoter in the world, after Live Nation Entertainment.

“The fact that A.E.G. has put itself in a position where it is getting more attention than some of its clients,” Mr. Crutchfield said, “is exactly where that kind of business should not be.”

Jens Erik Gould contributed reporting.

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Personal note: The trial has shown AEG to be exactly what they are. One of the best lines in this piece: “The fact that A.E.G. has put itself in a position where it is getting more attention than some of its clients,” Mr. Crutchfield said, “is exactly where that kind of business should not be.”