LeGrand Testimony Raises Qs about Ex-Associates’ Intentions – MB #288

LeGrand Testimony Raises Qs about Ex-Associates’ Intentions – MB #288

NOVEMBER 29 2005 — In light of the most recent attempts of ex-associates to get into Michael Jackson’s pockets…again….MJEOL wanted to take a look back at court testimony from attorney David LeGrand.

Two clients of attorney Howard King are suing Jackson: Dieter Wiesner and Marc Schaffel. Wiesner (or ‘Weizner’ as it appears in court records) is currently suing Jackson for $64 million dollars. No one ever sues Jackson for a reasonable amount of money. It seems that everyone always wants to sue him for a gazillion billion dollars. But I digress.

Schaffel is suing Jackson as well. But Jackson is countersuing him for fraud, for concealing, commingling, and misappropriating funds. Schaffel’s also being sued for charging expenses for matters unrelated to the agreement between Jackson and him, for keeping false books of account, and for keeping $250,000 worth of paintings and statues that were to be delivered to Jackson.

Tommy Mottola Faces The Music – Highlight History

Feature [b]Tommy Mottola Faces The Music[/b] From the March 3, 2003 issue of New York Magazine. Why was Tommy Mottola—the industry’s most flamboyant mogul, and one of its most powerful—pushed out of Sony’s beleaguered music division and replaced with NBC head Andy Lack? The real story behind Sony’s musical chairs. By Phoebe Eaton Buried under nineteen inches of snow and duct-taped into submission by terror warnings, New York was in a glum mood for the Grammys, back in town—APPLAUD NOW—for the first time since 1998. The Madison Square Garden festivities would be televised on CBS in prime time, punctuated with performances by such Sony money-spinners and award nominees as Bruce Springsteen, Ashanti, and the Dixie Chicks. But this year’s Sony party, held at the barnlike Hammerstein Ballroom nearby, stood to be conspicuously downscaled from the red-carpet extravaganzas of the not-so-distant past. Sony’s Grammy soirée had been second only to Clive Davis’s big-shot-heavy bacchanal. But no more. Maybe because nobody expected to run into the party’s recently deposed host, Sony’s pinky-ringed music man, Tommy Mottola. On January 9, Sony had faxed around a press release: The chairman and chief executive of Sony Music, Tommy Mottola (or Thomas D. Mottola, as he preferred to be known in the newspapers) would be leaving to launch a new venture. He’d been thinking about making a change for some time, it said, and while it’s true he had a couple years to go on his contract, Sony had suddenly, graciously agreed to spring him. Ever the diplomat, Sony America’s avuncular head, Sir Howard Stringer, saluted the outgoing Mottola as “an icon,” but there was no disguising the fact that the best-known and most flamboyant executive in the music business was out in a force play.

Howard King Determined to Try Weak Case in the Media? – MB #287 Update2

Howard King Determined to Try Weak Case in the Media? – MB #287 UPDATE #2 Another lawyer getting his face on television while using Jackson to do so NOVEMBER 23 2005 — Surprise, surprise. Another civil attorney chasing after Michael Jackson’s pockets decides to attempt to try Jackson in the court of public opinion. We’ve seen this before. Five Neverland employees once sued Jackson claiming they were wrongfully terminated and wanted $16 million. He countersued. They lost their suit and lost the countersuit against them. They ended up owing Jackson over a million dollars in legal fees and compensation from the theft and sale of his property. They also had to file for bankruptcy because they couldn’t pay the judgment. King is representing former outed pornographer Marc Schaffel. Now another ex-leech who was tossed from the Jackson gravy train has hooked up with the same lawyer in an effort to extract money from Jackson: the alleged crook, Dieter Wiesner Instead of King trying his case in court, it appears he is trying it in the media. He released what some have called heavily edited and incomplete tapes of what seem on the surface to be private Jackson phone messages.