Brimming with emotion when she first took the witness stand last week, Michael Jackson's mother came across Monday as a contentious, forgetful 83-year-old who contradicted herself while trying to defend her son.
Katherine Jackson, who along with the singer's three children is suing concert promoter AEG Live for the superstar's wrongful death, said she was unfamiliar with some of the more sensational details in her son's life.
She said she didn't know that Michael's "Dangerous" tour had come to an early end in 1993 when Elizabeth Taylor flew to Mexico City to take the singer to a rehab hospital in London. The family matriarch said she didn't even realize the world tour had been cut short.
The singer made a public announcement that he was canceling the remainder of the tour to seek treatment for an addiction to painkillers, but apparently no one told his mother.
"I don't like to hear bad news," Katherine Jackson said.
AEG Live attorney Marvin Putnam asked her about an intervention she and her children staged at Michael's Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County in 2002 over his abuse of painkillers. Katherine Jackson made it sound like a normal family gathering.
She said that neither she nor her children questioned the singer about his use of prescription medication.
"We just saw he was OK and was upset, and ... there was no deep discussion or anything," she said.
Katherine Jackson said that after a couple of her children had said Michael had a problem with prescription drugs, she questioned him about it when the singer was living in Las Vegas. She said she knew her son was taking painkillers for the burns he suffered to his scalp while filming a Pepsi commercial and for a back injury, but he denied he was abusing the medication. She said that was good enough for her.
She said she told her son that she didn't want him "to end up like the others," a reference to other celebrities who had died of drug overdoses.
Putnam showed a 2010 interview during which Katherine Jackson told Oprah Winfrey, "It was a long time before I knew he was addicted" to prescription drugs.
When Putnam asked her how she squared the comment with her testimony, Katherine Jackson answered: "I kind of believed him, and I didn't believe him."
In their lawsuit, Katherine Jackson and her son's three children claim that AEG Live, which was promoting and producing Michael's 50 comeback concerts in London, negligently hired and supervised Dr. Conrad Murray, who gave the singer the dose of the anesthetic propofol that killed him on June 25, 2009. AEG says that the singer hired Murray and that any money it was supposed to pay the doctor would have been an advance to Jackson.
Katherine Jackson has spent much of the 21/2-month trial sitting in the front row of the courtroom with her nephew Trent. She arrived in court Monday wearing a floral-patterned coat and a maroon blouse, with gold hoop earrings and a gold necklace.
At times her anger toward Putnam flared, and she refused to answer some questions. After a short portion of her deposition was shown to the jury, she asked Putnam: "Why are you doing this to me? You're asking me the same question 50 times, but you're just rephrasing them."
But the day was not without humor.
When Brian Panish, one of the attorneys for the Jacksons, objected to a question on the grounds of hearsay, Katherine Jackson chimed in, "I agree."
"Are you familiar with hearsay, ma'am?" Putnam asked.
"Are you talking to me?" Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos replied.
jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com
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