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Official - Michael Jackson was scum

PhantomWolf said:
Paying off nuisance law suits is actually a very common practice as defending them in court can often cost more than a pay off does. It is no more an admission of guilt than pleading the 5th.
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You may be over-generalizing. Is paying off accusers of sexual abuse or misconduct, specifically, as "very common" as paying off other kinds of nuisance lawsuits? It seems to me that the public views a settlement in such a case very differently from how it views a settlement over say a slip and fall claim, or a patent dispute, and this surely has to have an effect on whether a person chooses to settle.

On the other hand, it's mentioned above by someone that one of the alleged victims was paid off specifically by Jackson's insurance company. Liability insurance companies aren't known for settling arbitrary "nuisance claims" in the hundreds-of-thousands to millions ballpark. Their whole business model is based on paying out only when they absolutely have to and they will fight claims in court that they perceive to be weak, flawed, or frivolous. I find it unlikely that an insurance company would've directly paid a claimant unless their own legal department determined a reasonable case could be made that damage occurred which was covered by the policy.
 
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I have no dog in the race. I never had any connection, and was never a rabid fan by any means -I just saw him as another pampered celebrity.

But thinking back about it, I believe the allegations against MJ probably did more to make me into a skeptic than just about any other world event.

The tide of public opinion just keeps sweeping over the same ol' beach, and the facts just get washed out to sea as if they never mattered at all. I'm always shocked by how many people don't even want to LOOK at the facts, let alone consider them carefully before rushing to judgement.
 
Checkmite said:
You may be over-generalizing. Is paying off accusers of sexual abuse or misconduct, specifically, as "very common" as paying off other kinds of nuisance lawsuits? It seems to me that the public views a settlement in such a case very differently from how it views a settlement over say a slip and fall claim, or a patent dispute, and this surely has to have an effect on whether a person chooses to settle.

On the other hand, it's mentioned above by someone that one of the alleged victims was paid off specifically by Jackson's insurance company. Liability insurance companies aren't known for settling arbitrary "nuisance claims" in the hundreds-of-thousands to millions ballpark. Their whole business model is based on paying out only when they absolutely have to and they will fight claims in court that they perceive to be weak, flawed, or frivolous. I find it unlikely that an insurance company would've directly paid a claimant unless their own legal department determined a reasonable case could be made that damage occurred which was covered by the policy.
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On the other hand, the one known payout was, in fact, by an insurance company, and was over his objections. You can consider this to be unusual, but it's what happened regardless. As for the payoffs of "other" families, we actually don't have any evidence of them. What we do have, at the moment, is "new" allegations from Radar that are not actually new, and that were either shown to be false or made to be far more salacious than they were. For example, those supposedly horrible photos with his cousins, that turned out to be adults and were just promotional photos for one of their songs that MJ was featured in.
 
Checkmite said:
You may be over-generalizing. Is paying off accusers of sexual abuse or misconduct, specifically, as "very common" as paying off other kinds of nuisance lawsuits? It seems to me that the public views a settlement in such a case very differently from how it views a settlement over say a slip and fall claim, or a patent dispute, and this surely has to have an effect on whether a person chooses to settle.

On the other hand, it's mentioned above by someone that one of the alleged victims was paid off specifically by Jackson's insurance company. Liability insurance companies aren't known for settling arbitrary "nuisance claims" in the hundreds-of-thousands to millions ballpark. Their whole business model is based on paying out only when they absolutely have to and they will fight claims in court that they perceive to be weak, flawed, or frivolous. I find it unlikely that an insurance company would've directly paid a claimant unless their own legal department determined a reasonable case could be made that damage occurred which was covered by the policy.
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In one article, I read that Santa Barbara and L.A. spent over two million just on the first and second investigations and the trial that went south for them. Since the other suit was civil and the court and attorney costs were taken up by the plaintiff/defendant, it's quite likely that those "bestest lawyers in the world" that Jackson's reported to have had, plus the attorneys for the insurance company and the blood-suckers for the plaintiff were going to exceed that amount by quite a bit.

IIRC, the civil case insurance was not even insurance he bought for himself but was part of his contracts with his record/film/entertainment companies. Those people don't look at it as OMG Fifteen Million, but in terms of how much hurt was going to be put on their income from their billion dollar property, Michael Jackson. And, as it's been noted, Jackson believed his fans would believe him once they saw all the evidence. ETA: The original suit was for twenty million. He had offered them a million to go away. When they countered with fifteen million, he countered by cutting his offer to 1/3 of that amount. I don't think that sounds like someone who was buying their silence. His management, though, wanted it to go away.
 
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My favorite quote so far, on Wikipedia:

Journalist Matt Taibbi wrote:

"The trial featured perhaps the most compromised collection of prosecution witnesses ever assembled in an American criminal case...the chief drama of the trial quickly turned into a race to see if the DA could manage to put all of his witnesses on the stand without getting any of them removed from the courthouse in manacles."[72
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cullennz said:
Because he had a group of some of the best and most expensive lawyers in the US saying it was art and to go settle for a pay off
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I doubt it. Hey...the Cops and the Prosecuters were real dumb on this case. For that matter, most Cops and Prosecuters don't know how to build a decent case for they have been convicting indigents and retards for so long that they have become idiots - and so it was with the Michael Jackson Case.

Yeah...I think Jackson was guilty, but it's going to take more than the local dumb cops to get to the truth of the matter.
 
Foolmewunz said:
His entire life is a "single fact"? You must have some amazing cerebral computing abilities.

The overall case seems to be "Well, he was icky, ya know."
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Peter Pan from Neverland....luvs little Boyz, and he's got wonderful toys for them to play with in his fantasy world: Neverland Ranch! And when the happy little boyz are tired from playing all day with those wonderful toyz, then they can curl up at night and sleep with Peter Pan - and dream sweet dreams of "Once upon a Time".
 
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Jules Galen said:
His entire life.
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It's that sort of attitude that lets the Bill Cosbys of the world flourish. You judge based on appearances, and what "seems obvious". So innocent oddballs get persecuted and actual rapists and pedophiles go free. Jimmy Saville didn't "seem weird", so he got away with it. Because people like you refuse to utilize skepticism. Congrats! Your intellectual laziness makes the world a worse place.
 
Jules Galen said:
Peter Pan from Neverland....luvs little Boyz, and he's got wonderful toys for them to play with in his fantasy world: Neverland Ranch! And when the happy little boyz are tired from playing all day with those wonderful toyz, then they can curl up at night and sleep with Peter Pan - and dream sweet dreams of "Once upon a Time".
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So, not a manly man like you, so he's got to be a freak, a pervert, a paedophile. How are you with Fred Rogers? Captain Kangaroo? J.M. Barrie? Each of those loved little children, lived an entire life in a fairy tale world and was the butt of "homo" and "paedo" jokes.

But you guys know from instinct, eh? You can just tell.
 
I don't think there's any doubt that Jackson was a pedophile. The question is did he act on it in a way that was/is illegal.

If yes, he was either very careful or prosecutors were very dumb, or both, for him not to get convicted.

If no, he had a lot of self control and was very careful to know just where the line was. And prosecutors might have been dumb too, but at least they were honest.

I haven't read enough evidence of the case to form an opinion between those options. The second one would be extremely rare, but theoretically not impossible.
 
TragicMonkey said:
It's that sort of attitude that lets the Bill Cosbys of the world flourish. You judge based on appearances, and what "seems obvious". So innocent oddballs get persecuted and actual rapists and pedophiles go free. Jimmy Saville didn't "seem weird", so he got away with it. Because people like you refuse to utilize skepticism. Congrats! Your intellectual laziness makes the world a worse place.
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I don't know about that. I mean, Michael Jackson didn't last too long after his supply of Boyz was cut off.
 
Pup said:
I don't think there's any doubt that Jackson was a pedophile. The question is did he act on it in a way that was/is illegal.

If yes, he was either very careful or prosecutors were very dumb, or both, for him not to get convicted.

If no, he had a lot of self control and was very careful to know just where the line was. And prosecutors might have been dumb too, but at least they were honest.

I haven't read enough evidence of the case to form an opinion between those options. The second one would be extremely rare, but theoretically not impossible.
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I don't think he was a pedophile. However, I think it's possible he was insulated from consequences that he just never learned proper boundaries.

To me, the whole "Never Land" theme is his way of saying "I don't want to grow up, and I'm too rich for you to make me" to his parents, his business contacts, the world.

Most of the stuff presented as evidence of wrongdoing don't really seem so strange to me, but I realize my unorthodox childhood left me with some lasting impressions about just how big the world is, and how many things that seem strange to "most" is "everyday life" to some.

I can really relate to the closet full of toys. My kids had so many I rotated them by putting half or more into boxes, and letting them swap 'em out when they got bored. I stored the boxes...in the closet! I can only imagine how many toys MJ's kids probably owned, as MJ himself seems to have been a collector of them his own self.
 
Pup said:
And prosecutors might have been dumb too, but at least they were honest.
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You really haven't read much of the case. At one point during the grand jury the prosecutor handed the accuser an unwrapped pornography magazine seized from Jackson's house. He then later tried to use the fact that the accuser's fingerprints were on that magazine as physical evidence Jackson had handed it to him.

Then the defense got the accuser to state exactly when this allegedly occurred...and the date he claimed was six months before that magazine had ever been published.

Seriously, people who think Jackson was guilty have not read much of the trial at all, they've only heard the news reports which were invariably slanted. Reporters literally left the room after each witness for the prosecution testified, so they could get all the salacious details into the news as quickly as possible for ratings...so they missed the cross-examinations in which every single witness foundered.
 
TragicMonkey said:
You really haven't read much of the case. At one point during the grand jury the prosecutor handed the accuser an unwrapped pornography magazine seized from Jackson's house. He then later tried to use the fact that the accuser's fingerprints were on that magazine as physical evidence Jackson had handed it to him.

Then the defense got the accuser to state exactly when this allegedly occurred...and the date he claimed was six months before that magazine had ever been published.

Seriously, people who think Jackson was guilty have not read much of the trial at all, they've only heard the news reports which were invariably slanted. Reporters literally left the room after each witness for the prosecution testified, so they could get all the salacious details into the news as quickly as possible for ratings...so they missed the cross-examinations in which every single witness foundered.
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I don't think anyone could argue that it was a bad case, and if I had been a Juror, then I would not have voted to convict and would have been quite upset at the State's evidence and witnesses. Nevertheless, I believe Jackson was a Pedophile...Big Time.
 
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