Michael Jackson

[strandinthewind]

No Big Easy for Jackson
by Joal Ryan
Jul 20, 2005, 5:45 PM PT
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It wasn't clear where Michael Jackson was Wednesday. It was only clear where he wasn't: in a New Orleans courtroom.

Jackson's absence at a hearing for a sexual-assault lawsuit might not have been a big deal had his lawyers been present, but they weren't. The judge in the case scheduled an Aug. 17 hearing to give the pop star's camp one more chance to show up or face a judgment without the benefit of a trial.

The once ubiquitous entertainer has been out of the public eye since being acquitted June 13 of all charges in his nearly six-month-long child-molestation trial. A few weeks ago, he was said to be enjoying a royal vacation at a palace in Bahrain. His father, Joseph Jackson, told reporters he hoped his famed son would join him in Berlin for a three-day-long birthday celebration this weekend. The birthday being celebrated is the senior Jackson's, who is turning 76; the younger Jackson turns 47 next month.

Back in Louisiana, meanwhile, Joseph Thomas Bartucci Jr. is alleging that the then 25-year-old Michael Jackson did very bad things.

In a lawsuit filed last November amid the run-up to Jackson's California criminal trial, Bartucci claimed that when he was 18 in 1984 the singer sexually abused him and cut him with a razor blade and a steel wire. Now middle-aged, the New Orleans man says he repressed the assault until a 2003 Court TV special on Jackson's molestation case brought it all back.

Last fall, Jackson's criminal defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. promised the lawsuit would be fully litigated in court. On Wednesday, Jackson family attorney Brian Oxman told the Associated Press he wasn't sure why the singer wasn't represented at the hearing. According to the AP, Jackson is being sued for $50,000 by local New Orleans lawyers who were hired to represent him in the case but apparently were not paid in full.

Bartucci is seeking unspecified damages for a host of ailments he claims were caused by the alleged assault.

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,16985,00.html

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Did anyone see Nancy Grace on this last night