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Untouchable book

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Post  Imagen Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:51 pm

It's easy to tell what parts of Sullivan's book have been sourced from "the media" and even if you can't tell, Sullivan's own chapter notes go into great detail about where he sourced his info from, including the stuff sourced from media articles. But there's other stuff like this...

Within hours of firing Adam Streisand, Mrs. J had hired an attorney who told her very convincingly he could do that.

Perry Sanders Jr.. was a “big-time litigator,” as TMZ put it in the first report of his appearance on the scene. Most famously, he had filed the wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles that accused LAPD officers of involvement in the murder of rapper Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls. Sanders had also played the pivotal role in securing song-publishing rights worth hundreds of millions of dollars in an action against Master P and the No Limit Records catalog. Gaining control of a disputed music publishing catalog was, for obvious reasons, a particularly impressive achievement in Katherine J’s eyes.

Sanders suggested that Katherine direct any questions she might have about his performance as an attorney and his trustworthiness as an individual to Voletta Wallace, Notorious B.I.G.’s mom, herself a Jehovah’s Witness, a woman of great faith and impressive character. The day before she dismissed Streisand, Michael’s mother and Biggie’s mother spent four hours on the phone together. By the end of that conversation, Katherine said, she was sold on Perry Sanders.

Sanders is an athletically built man in his late fifties, with chiseled features, a shaved head and face, and barely any eyebrows; he suggests an actor hired to play Lex Luthor as a protagonist. Raised in Louisiana as the son of one of the South’s best-known Baptist preachers, Sanders's big grin and down-home colloquialisms (he was usually “fixin’” to do one thing or another) masked a capacity for coldblooded cunning and creative strategies that was matched by few attorneys in the country. According to one of Mrs. J’s advisors, Sanders had explained to Katherine at their second meeting that his main tactic in a situation like the one he had inherited from Adam Streisand was fairly simple on the surface: He approached his adversaries with the peacemaking offer of a fair deal in one hand and a brick in the other. He offered the deal first. If they didn’t take it, he hit them in the head with the brick, then asked if they’d like to reconsider. Of course, Sanders added, you wanted to make sure you had a real solid brick before you began that kind of conversation.

Sanders realized he had the makings of a blunt instrument to his liking as soon as he read a copy of a filing that Brian Oxman had made in Judge Beckloff’s court several months earlier. “Joseph J’s Objection to the Appointment of John Branca and John McClain as executors of the Estate of Michael J” was the heading on a lengthy document that began with detailed allegations of fraud and possible forgery by Branca. Oxman had listed seventeen separate occasions between July 1, 2009, and September 29, 2009, when he claimed the executor had perjured himself by testifying that the will submitted to the court was “correct,” asserting that Branca and McClain “have conducted themselves in a fraudulent deceptive manner where their veracity can no longer be trusted.”

Contd...
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Post  Imagen Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:53 pm

Contd...

While Oxman’s filing detailed the doubts about the authenticity of the will and trust agreement raised by his investigation, Joe’s attorney had been shrewd enough to recognize that the smart move was not to try to invalidate those documents. Rather, Sanders saw, the play was to challenge Branca’s decision to retain the originals of those two documents after he was fired as Michael J’s attorney, and to attack his failure to resign from his position as executor. “In violation of his fiduciary duties, Branca concealed the purported will and concealed his refusal to resign,” Oxman charged, and in so doing had deceived and defrauded both Michael J and the court. On the one hand, “Branca never accounted to Michael J regarding his conduct, nor disclosed his books and records to Michael J.” On the other hand, Branca’s failure to inform Judge Beckloff that he had been fired as Michael J’s attorney because Michael believed he was guilty of “embezzlement” was a fraud upon the court, Oxman had written.

Sanders had been warned that Oxman was a bit of a publicity hound, but Katherine’s new attorney was impressed by the largely technical accusations of fraud, conflict of interest, self-dealing, and failure of fiduciary duty that made up most of the court filing submitted on Joe J’s behalf. The document was filled with accusations involving “the thousands of licensing agreements that Branca and his law firm had entered into on behalf of Michael J and the $ony/ATV Trust,” as well as details about the 2006 deal in which Michael had bought out Branca’s interest in the $ony/ATV music publishing catalog for $15 million.

The two-page business plan that Michael had “supposedly” signed a week before his death was itself “a continuation of the concealment, conflicts of interest, and violations of fiduciary duties which plagued Branca’s conduct for years,” Oxman had concluded.

The filing was the stuff of a potent lawsuit, Sanders thought, but the merits of the case had never been heard. Judge Beckloff’s preemptive ruling had been that Joe J was not a named beneficiary of his son Michael’s will and therefore “doesn’t have any interest in the estate.” Sanders’s client Katherine J, though, was a named beneficiary of the will, meaning that the judge would be compelled to hear any claim he brought against Branca on her behalf.

Even before being hired as Mrs. J’s attorney, Sanders had been discussing how to mount an attack on Branca with other high-profile litigators, among them Paul V. LiCalsi, who had long represented the Beatles’ company Apple Corps Limited and John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono. At the same time, he was collecting information that raised ever more intriguing questions about Michael J’s will and John Branca’s conduct. Branca had thus far avoided answering questions** about who at his law firm had prepared the Michael J will and trust agreement submitted to Judge Beckloff, or about why he and his law firm had retained the originals of those documents after they were “commanded” to return them in 2003. Branca had also declined to respond to any questions about where and when Michael J signed the will that had been submitted to Judge Beckloff. On Branca’s behalf, Weitzman emphasized that Michael J’s 2002 will had been approved by the probate court, but Weitzman himself offered no details about where and when the will had been signed, though he did insist that the signature was genuine and that all three witnesses had been present when Michael J signed his name.

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Post  Imagen Fri Mar 15, 2013 1:25 pm

Contd...

Howard Weitzman refused to go on the record with TMZ or anyone else in the media about whether the will had been signed in New York or Los Angeles. Sanders himself spoke to Michael’s former accountant, Barry Siegel, who said the will had been signed “ in California.” Yet Siegel’s friend Dennis Hawk said he understood from Barry that the will was signed in New York.

After Katherine J told Sanders that Adam Streisand had said he believed the Michael J will submitted to Judge Beckloff’s court was questionable, Mrs. J’s business partner Howard Mann advised Sanders that he could produce a court-certified handwriting expert who could challenge the Michael J signatures on the trust agreement. Raising further doubts about the validity of the will, at least in Sanders’s mind, was that the signature page produced by Branca was entirely separate from the body of the document, making it impossible to say whether it was the same document that Michael J had signed in July 2002. Even Barry Siegel had admitted to Sanders that he had no way of knowing.

Sanders was even more interested to learn that in the spring of 2009 Michael had been in conversations about his need for an estate planner, and in the process had convinced his representatives, Dennis Hawk and Tohme Tohme, that there was no valid will or trust agreement in existence. “ That was my distinct impression,” said Hawk, who in March 2009, right around the time that the “ This Is It” shows were announced, had been asked by Michael and Tohme to find an attorney who could prepare an estate plan for Michael that included a will and trust agreement. Both Hawk and Tohme saw the Neverland Trust agreements (naming Katherine J as the trustee of the estate and making no mention of John Branca) that had been prepared in 2006 during Raymone Bain’s reign as Michael’s manager, and assumed those would be the templates of any new estate documents. Hawk reportedly had contacted Sean Najerian, a lawyer who had prepared such documents for other clients of his.

Najerian said Dennis had indeed called to ask if he would consider the scope of an estate plan for Michael J, whether he would be capable of preparing documents that included a will and trust agreement, and what he would charge in terms of a flat fee to do so. Tohme followed up, and there were a number of conversations during March and April, Najerian said, but then the calls simply stopped. The reason for that, apparently, was Tohme’s estrangement from Michael during the Julien Auctions imbroglio. “I can tell you that in 2009 Michael didn’t
think he had any will,” Tohme said two years later.

Contd...




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Post  Imagen Fri Mar 15, 2013 1:35 pm

Contd...

What made the whole situation even more confusing was that Michael J had signed at least one other will and trust agreement subsequent to July 2002—in Florida during 2003. Those documents named Al Malnik as the executor of Michael’s estate, and as guardian to Michael’s youngest child, Blanket. Marc Schaffel was one of the two official witnesses to Michael’s signature, at Malnik’s home in Ocean Ridge. He recalled that this trust agreement was much longer and more elaborate than the one submitted by Branca to Judge Beckloff, Schaffel said. Malnik had in fact acknowledged the existence of such a will in a brief interview with the Palm Beach Post’s “Page 2” columnist Jose Lambiet on the day after Michael’s death, adding that he also had agreed to be the guardian of MJ’s youngest child Blanket. “There could always be a superseding document he signed since then,” Malnik told Lambiet. “I haven’t heard anything yet, but it’s probably too early.” After that, though, Malnik had gone silent, refusing to talk to the reporters who called to ask about it. And no 2003 will had surfaced.

There had been just two copies of that will and trust agreement, as Schaffel remembered it, one for Malnik’s files and one for Michael’s. If anyone had discovered a copy of the Malnik will in Michael J’s files after his death, though, they weren’t saying. Malnik himself refused to speak on the record but told Schaffel that he wasn’t interested in producing his copy of the will Michael had signed in 2003. “Al is an eighty-year-old billionaire who doesn’t want to be bothered with all this,” Schaffel explained. “He certainly doesn’t need the money, and his feelings were hurt when Michael turned on him back in 2003, after the Muslims came in. Plus, he told me he’d probably have hired Branca to run the estate anyway, because he knows more than anybody else about it.”

By late April 2011, Sanders seemed to think he had formed a brick that was solid and sizeable enough to carry into a conversation with the estate. Some members of the Michael family, though, Joe and Randy in particular, were complaining that this new lawyer looked like yet another guy who wanted to get in bed with Branca. They weren’t pleased by Sanders’s first public statement after the news of his hiring as Katherine’s attorney broke: “Bottom line—I am going to do anything in my power to tone down the rhetoric that has happened to date to the extent possible.” At a lunch meeting in Beverly Hills the next day, Sanders assured Howard Weitzman that he would much rather work with the estate than fight against it. Within the week, he had proven this by settling the Heal the World Foundation lawsuit, orchestrating a deal that guaranteed Katherine Michael and Melissa Johnson seats on the charity’s board of directors but gave John Branca ultimate control.

_____
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Post  Imagen Fri Mar 15, 2013 1:54 pm

Sullivan stops talking about the Will here but he does add this very long footnote and the end of the chapter:

In late August 2012, after sixteen months of refusing to answer any questions at all, despite multiple offers of the opportunity to do so, John Branca, through his attorney Howard Weitzman, agreed to respond to questions from me, if they were “put into context.” Essentially, Branca and Weitzman wanted me to reveal what I had. Despite the fact that this book had already gone into production, my publisher and I agreed and I responded with an e-mail to Weitzman in which I outlined the four major areas of question or controversy: questions involving the preparation and signing of the 2002 will; questions about the circumstances of Mr. Branca’s termination as Michael J’s attorney in February 2003; questions about whether Michael J, at the time of his death, actually wanted John Branca to serve as his executor; and questions about whether John Branca was in fact rehired as Michael J’s attorney in June 2009. I also invited Mr. Branca to respond to the criticism of him by members of the J family for the degree to which he had been personally enriched by his administration of the Michael J estate.

Weitzman responded forcefully and persuasively to the question about whether Branca was rehired in 2009, first by arranging for a conference call with Michael Kane, who had been hired as Michael J’s business manager shortly before his death and who continued to serve in that capacity for the estate. Kane told me that he had personally witnessed the meeting between Branca and Michael at the Forum, and had in fact participated in some of it. Weitzman also arranged a conference call with Joel Katz, who had been hired as Michael’s entertainment lawyer in the spring of 2009, and Katz told me he was certain that Branca and Michael had met as claimed, because he had spoken to Michael J about the meeting a short time afterward. He had asked Michael if he minded John joining the team, Katz said, and Michael had told him he did not. Not long after this, Katz said, he saw a document signed by Michael J that approved a business plan that would be directed by John Branca. Members of the J family and critics of John Branca retorted that Kane and Katz were employees of the estate and allies of Branca. I see no legitimate basis for insulting Mr. Kane and Mr. Katz with the suggestion that they would lie at John Branca’s behest and I accept that Branca did in fact meet with Michael J at the Forum and likely was rehired as one of Michael’s entertainment attorneys. For me, that controversy has been settled in Mr. Branca’s favor.

Howard Weitzman had no real answers to offer, though, about the other three areas of question and controversy I submitted to him. On the question of why the will shows that it was signed in Los Angeles on July 7, 2002, a date when Michael J was in New York City, Mr. Branca was choosing not to reply, Weitzman told me. Weitzman claimed that he himself had not been given an explanation for the discrepancy, stating that he had heard different stories from different people. Weitzman, of course, insisted the July 7 will was not fraudulent and was signed by Michael J in the presence of three witnesses. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Branca was talking to a reporter from Forbes named Zack O’Malley Greenburg, who had just written a story for his magazine that would be published even as Weitzman and I were talking. “The Scandalously Boring Truth About Michael J’s Will,” the article was titled. In it, Greenburg explained that even if the 2002 will had been found to be invalid, there were two other Michael J wills in John Branca’s possession, one executed in 1997 and the other in 1995, that would have become the successor documents. And both of those wills, as Greenburg reported, named John Branca as one of Michael J’s executors. So Branca had absolutely no motive to submit a fraudulent 2002 will, Weitzman pointed out to me after he recited the facts that were the basis of the Greenburg article. What both Weitzman and Greenburg somehow ignored, though, was that in February 2003, when he was terminated as Michael J’s attorney, Branca had been ordered to surrender “all” documents in his possession, not just the 2002 will, but the 1997 and 1995 wills as well. If Branca had done what he was supposed to do, he would have had no Michael J wills in his possession at the time of Michael’s death, a fact that renders both Weitzman’s argument and Greenburg’s thesis irrelevant.

Contd...


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Post  Imagen Fri Mar 15, 2013 2:00 pm

Contd...

Weitzman had no reply to offer from Branca to the question of why he had failed to surrender the originals of Michael J’s wills in 2003. Again Weitzman told me that his client was declining to answer any questions on that subject. When I pointed out that Branca’s refusals to answer questions about the problems with the will itself and about his failure to return it to Michael J in 2003 were inevitably going to raise suspicions, Weitzman said he understood this, but had to obey his client’s instructions. Weitzman did attempt at one point to suggest that perhaps Branca had simply handed off the 2003 termination letter from Michael J to an assistant who had somehow failed to include the will (or wills) in the documents returned to Michael. I pointed out that this was implausible. If the will had surfaced months after Michael’s death when files were being moved into storage or something such as that, then the story that the failure to return the will was an oversight by an assistant would perhaps be believable, I told Weitzman. But the fact was that Branca knew he had the 2002 will at the time of Michael J’s death and immediately began the process of producing it for certification, then presented it to the court within a week of Michael’s death. And if Branca knew he had the will, I pointed out to Weitzman, then he knew he had failed to do as he had been instructed to do by his former client back in 2003. And that, by the standards of the State Bar, was not ethical. Weitzman didn’t like hearing this from me, but he had no answer for it, either.
Contd...


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Post  Imagen Fri Mar 15, 2013 2:06 pm

Contd...

Weitzman quite reasonably pointed out that John Branca couldn’t be expected to respond to claims about the things that Michael had said about Branca during the more than six years that passed between his 2003 termination and Michael’s death. What startled me, though, was how exercised Branca and Weitzman were by the subject of the 2003 Michael will that named Al Malnik as executor. Weitzman said he had spoken to Malnik and that Malnik had told him that will “was never filed.” Later Weitzman stated that Malnik had told him the will “never existed.” That was strange. My initial knowledge of the Malnik will had come from Marc Schaffel, who told me he had been one of the two witnesses to Michael’s signature at Malnik’s home in Florida. I would have been a little shaky if all I’d had to base my belief in the 2003 will was on Schaffel’s statements. But I had discovered that on the day of Michael’s death, Malnik had given not one but two telephone interviews to journalists in the Miami Beach area in which he stated that, as of 2004, he was the executor of Michael’s estate, on the basis of a document signed in 2003. The first interview was given to Palm Beach Post columnist Jose Lambiet and the second to a reporter at the CBS affiliate in Miami, Lisa Petrillo. The Petrillo interview had been tape-recorded and played on the air during an evening broadcast. When I sought counsel from attorneys about what could be motivating Malnik to claim there never had been a 2003 will, if he was in fact saying that, two of them did bit of legal research for me and reported that, Malnik, as an attorney, had been obligated by the California Probate Code to produce any Michael will in his possession within sixty days of Michael’s death. If Malnik had possessed such a will and failed to produce it, he might face some legal consequences. What this all comes to I have no certain knowledge. I am convinced, though, that the 2003 Michael will did exist and I told this to Howard Weitzman.

Weitzman’s replies to the questions concerning whether Branca was rehired and to those who have criticized him for using his own law firm to prepare a will that named him as executor of the Michael Estate were incorporated into the text in an earlier chapter of this book.

In the letter that Weitzman sent to me and my publisher in John Branca’s formal reply to my questions, the attorney stated: “Mr. Branca and Michael had a long and multifaceted personal and professional relationship that, admittedly, was interrupted at certain points in their careers for various reasons. Those who harbor no bias or animus against Mr. Branca acknowledge his contributions to Michael’s career, and recognize his role and that of his co-executor in the stunning financial turnaround of the estate after Michael’s death.” No argument here.

____
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Post  MJnotes Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:20 am

i have just started reading the book at the suggestion of Mr Mesereau, and i think he wants us to pay attention to other things, such as these that you have quoted. i'm still on that part where he has just left Bahrain for good.

Imagen wrote:Howard Weitzman refused to go on the record with TMZ or anyone else in the media about whether the will had been signed in New York or Los Angeles. Sanders himself spoke to Michael’s former accountant, Barry Siegel, who said the will had been signed “ in California.” Yet Siegel’s friend Dennis Hawk said he understood from Barry that the will was signed in New York.

why couldn't he give a simple answer to a very simple question? and yet, why hadn't media thought this suspicious?

Imagen wrote:... the signature page produced by Branca was entirely separate from the body of the document, making it impossible to say whether it was the same document that Michael J had signed in July 2002. Even Barry Siegel had admitted to Sanders that he had no way of knowing.

correct. also, if i remember right, Barry Siegel resigned as co-executor citing conflicts of interest. do i remember right? well, Branca had no such compunctions.

Imagen wrote:Najerian said Dennis had indeed called to ask if he would consider the scope of an estate plan for Michael J, whether he would be capable of preparing documents that included a will and trust agreement, and what he would charge in terms of a flat fee to do so... “I can tell you that in 2009 Michael didn’t think he had any will,” Tohme said two years later.

in 2005, the lady journalist also said that Branca told her "There is no will." it's on You Tube.

i just realized that when Raymone Bain said that Michael insisted that he had a will, back when she asked him in 2007 if not 2005 - he could have been referring to the one supposedly with Al Malnik. but it's really so messy because of the Gordon Novel story. long story short, it was reported that Michael had a falling out with Al Malnik. so i'm wondering if an even newer will was made. still, why would Malnik clamp down on his knowledge about the will, after he has already given interviews?

as for Sanders, so was he bought as well? does he continue to be Katherine's lawyer? i don't recall seeing his name on the AEG Live lawsuit.

Imagen wrote:questions involving the preparation and signing of the 2002 will; questions about the circumstances of Mr. Branca’s termination as Michael J’s attorney in February 2003; questions about whether Michael J, at the time of his death, actually wanted John Branca to serve as his executor; and questions about whether John Branca was in fact rehired as Michael J’s attorney in June 2009. I also invited Mr. Branca to respond to the criticism of him by members of the J family for the degree to which he had been personally enriched by his administration of the Michael J estate.

same questions we have. i'd like to add, i want to know if he really resigned in 2006, as he claims, or if he was fired yet again. in the part of the book i'm reading, it was in 2006 that Raymone Bain announced a reorganization which fired Michael's team of lawyers and business managers.

Imagen wrote:Not long after this, Katz said, he saw a document signed by Michael J that approved a business plan that would be directed by John Branca.

i wonder why they don't show the re-hiring document that Michael supposedly signed, or even this business plan. Even Leonard Rowe had something to show. we've been shown so many of Michael's notes in 2009, even a redacted copy of the AEG Live contract, but the documents that matter so Branca could clear himself are conspicuously absent, just like the Ca$cio tracks that cannot show any kind of proof whatsoever.

i seriously doubt that Michael would want Branca back in. i seem to recall another source saying it was Dileo's idea to bring Branca back in, and if that's true, then i can only surmise that he wanted to do that favor for Branca so he could subsequently ask for legal help, too, in handling the case that All Good was going to launch on Dileo. if Branca was suddenly there at rehearsals, i can't see Michael being impolite and ignoring Branca, no matter how he may have felt.

Imagen wrote:On the question of why the will shows that it was signed in Los Angeles on July 7, 2002, a date when Michael J was in New York City, Mr. Branca was choosing not to reply, Weitzman told me. Weitzman claimed that he himself had not been given an explanation for the discrepancy, stating that he had heard different stories from different people.

"choosing not to reply..." and that is acceptable, Mr Weitzman?

"different stories from different people"......you're asking the wrong people, obviously. you only have to ask Branca, and he wouldn't give you an answer. so why is that acceptable to you?

Imagen wrote:If Branca had done what he was supposed to do, he would have had no Michael J wills in his possession at the time of Michael’s death, a fact that renders both Weitzman’s argument and Greenburg’s thesis irrelevant.

i could quote more. it stupefies me that Weitzman even defended Branca when Branca "declined to answer questions" on the major issues. and that the probate judge went along with this pair despite the fact there were a lot of fishy things going on.
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Post  Imagen Thu Apr 18, 2013 7:54 am

There had to be a reason why Mr Mesereau spoke as forcefully as he did in the video he uploaded. He has never let Michael down. In the book Sullivan wrote that all the people he spoke to had something negative to say about someone else. The only exception to the rule was that no one had a bad word to say about Tom Mesereau.

It seems that what Sullivan writes about the Will is just a sample of the things that are going on in the background now where Michael is concerned, and more importantly, that went on when Michael was here.

MJnotes wrote:
why couldn't he give a simple answer to a very simple question? and yet, why hadn't media thought this suspicious?

Trudy Green, John McLain and Barry Siegel signed as witnesses to the 2002 Will. Those three people are the ones who are supposed to know exactly where the Will was signed - they signed the Will as witnesses. It shouldn't matter whether they signed on a separate page or not but in this case, for several reasons, it does.

One of the signing provisions of the Will says this:

"On the date written below, MICHAEL JOSEPH Michael, declared to us, the undersigned, that the foregoing instrument consisting of five (5) pages, including the page signed by us as witnesses, was his Will and requested us to act as witnesses for it. He thereupon signed this Will in our presence, all of us being present at the same time. We now, at his request and in his presence and in the presence of each other subscribe our names as witness."

Barry Siegel - Sullivan writes that Siegel told Sanders the will was signed in California but Hawk understood Siegel to say the will was signed in New York.
Trudy Green - would not speak to Sullivan.
John McClain - there is nothing in Sullivan's book about where McClain thinks the Will was signed.

It IS a simple question. Those three people know the answer. Why has one contradicted himself, another doesn't want to talk about it (or anything apparently) and the third (an executor) has been mute on the subject, as far we know (for John McClain there is an obvious answer that could be assumed).

The media - that is a whole other story.


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Post  Imagen Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:20 am

There is a bit more about Barry Siegel in the book:

"Whatever the arrangement was between Branca and Dileo, picturing Michael J flanked by the two men who had steered the entertainer’s affairs during the most financially successful period of his (or any other artist’s) career was reassuring to Randy Phillips and the executives at AEG Live, who also encouraged the hiring of Michael’s former accountant, Barry Siegel."

Sullivan has extensive chapter notes, which include where he obtained his information. In the notes about the above paragraph Sullivan says this:

"AEG encouraging hiring of Siegel (they nearly succeeded): e-mails between Brother Michael, Randy Phillips’s assistant Arlyne Lewiston and Siegel."

Also included in the chapter notes, Sullivan cites the documents he has read. On the issue of AEG encouraging and nearly succeeding in hiring Siegel, these documents would appear to be the relevant:

1. Williams to Lewiston, 4/27/09.
2. Lewiston to Williams, 4/27/09.
3. E-mail from Barry Siegel, managing partner, Provident Financial Management, to Michael Amir Williams. April 27, 2009.
4. E-mail from Barry Siegel to Michael Amir Williams. April 28, 2009.
5. E-mail from Michael Amir Williams to Barry Siegel. April 30, 2009.
6. E-mail from Barry Siegel to Michael Amir Williams. April 30, 2009.
7. E-mail from Michael Amir Williams to Barry Siegel. May 1, 2009.
8. E-mail from Barry Siegel to Michael Amir Williams. May 1, 2009.

Sullivan does not give any information on why AEG 'did not succeed'.
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Post  MJnotes Sun Apr 21, 2013 1:48 am

i skipped to some parts and i think this part is also relevant in terms of how the Estate continues to evade having to disclose truths. it's somewhere towards the end. also, i think Sanders is still in there even if he's not participating in this lawsuit. seems he's focused on Estate matters.

"...:the Estate and its attorneys had been given far greater reason for concern by the request Sanders had made for "all supporting documents" of the "Second Account Current" the Estate has filed with Judge Beckloff, covering the period between November 1, 2010 and December 31, 2011, with a particular emphasis on its dealings connected to AEG and on third-party payments. Branca and Weitzman certainly were smart enough to see where this was heading. In its submission to Judge Beckloff, the estate's accounting was extensive but opaque, divided into broad categories of "disbursements," "payroll," "public relations," "attorney fees," "legal fees," and of course, "Co-Executive and Creative Director Compensation."...The Estate also reported that it had employed more than a dozen law firms in London, Tokyo, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, NY, Chicago, Las Vegas, Washington CD, Cleveland & LA, but that the largest shares of legal fees had gone to the firms of Howard Weitzman ($4.28M) and Joel Katz ($3.71M).

Sanders hired the best forensic accountant he could find to go through the estate's documents piece by piece, looking for evidence of conflict of interest, self-dealing, and failure of fiduciary responsibility. Katherine's attorney was clearly targeting anything that might suggest collusion between the estate and AEG. He already possessed perhaps enough ammunition, Sanders believed, to file a claim based on conflict of interest that targeted Branca and Weitzman personally for the estate's failure to either file its own lawsuit against AEG or to join in the case filed by Katherine J, and was prepared to make this known before Judge Beckloff.

In apparent anticipation of the move, the estate in early August had requested and received a postponement of the "Second Account Current" hearing before Judge Beckloff, putting it off until September 20...On August 20, however, the estate has filed 9 separate objections to Sanders' request for documents, characterizing it as "vague and ambiguous" and "unduly burdensome." The estate's lawyers also claimed that some of the information sought by Katherine was "highly confidential" or was protected by attorney-client privilege and as attorney-work product. The demand Sanders had made on Mrs J's behalf clearly infringed upon Branca and McClain's "rights to privacy," argued the estate's attorneys, who also objected to the demand for documents in the "control of third parties" and assumed "existence of such documents" without proof that they did, in fact, exist."

MJnotes
MJnotes

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