By the late summer of 2009, Randy Jackson was leading the opposition to
Branca, in coordination with his father. Both men, and most of the Jackson family
for that matter, were suspicious of the July 2, 2002, will and the Michael Jackson
Family Trust document that Branca had produced out of his law firm’s files. They
had what several attorneys told them were solid reasons for that suspicion. Branca’s
possibly questionable decision to permit his own firm to prepare a will that named
him as the executor of an estate that included one of the most valuable properties in
the entire entertainment industry—a half-share of the Sony/ATV catalog—was just
one of several potential fault lines.


Attorneys who specialized in probate law agreed almost unanimously on how
badly drawn both the will and the trust appeared to be. Each document was much
shorter, much simpler, and much less detailed than one would have expected in the
disposition of such a large personal fortune. The absence of provisions that would
have protected Michael Jackson’s estate from tax burdens was perplexing to a
number of lawyers who had read the trust agreement. The failure was so glaring that
it raised questions about a breach of fiduciary duty, several of them said. Then there
was the fact that the trust had been prepared and executed in March 2002, nearly
four months before the date on the signature page of the will. Commonly (though
not always) a person’s will and his trust agreement are executed on the same day.
The observation that resonated most loudly among Michael’s family, though,
was that his children had not been listed by their proper legal names. The oldest
boy’s name in the will was written “ Prince Michael Jackson, Jr.” when in fact his
name is Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr. (no “ Prince”); the girl’s name in the will
omitted the hyphen between Paris and Michael, and the youngest was identified as
“ Prince Michael Joseph Jackson II” when it is actually Prince Michael Jackson II
(no “ Joseph”).Every one of the Jacksons, along with most of those who had spent
any time with Michael during the previous decade, understood how particular he
was when it came to his kids. “ Michael would never sign something where his
kids’ names were not spelled right,” Joe Jackson said, and for once his entire
family agreed with him.


The biggest questions of all, though, continued to be how and why John Branca
had managed to remain in possession of Michael Jackson’s will and trust
agreements until July 2009. Jackson lawyer Brian Oxman had secured a copy of the
letter with which Michael had dismissed Branca as his attorney in February 2003.
In it, Branca had been “ commanded” to “ deliver the originals” of “ all of my files,
records, documents, and accounts” to the new attorney, David LeGrand. He did in
fact deliver several boxes of papers to LeGrand. In 2004, after LeGrand was
dismissed, Brian Oxman took possession of those documents. “ I had access to
every file and I had to go through them,” he said. “ And I did. There was no will.
There was no trust. It just showed up after he died.” Randy Jackson said (and
eventually signed a sworn statement to this effect) that he had made a follow-up
demand to Branca for Michael’s documents in 2004, specifically mentioning the
will. Branca had told him he would turn over the documents still in his possession
only if he was paid monies he claimed to be owed for recent services. Under United
States law, an attorney is obligated to turn over all documents upon request
whether bills have been paid or not. Branca never sent the will, Randy Jackson
said.


Branca’s failure to turn over the will the first time he was asked to surrender all
documents would have been a reasonable basis for referring him to the State Bar for
disciplinary action, Oxman said. That he had refused two subsequent requests for
his former client’s documents nearly ensured that Branca would have faced some
sort of investigation from the bar, added Oxman, who was in a position to know,
having been twice suspended by the State Bar himself for failing to follow proper
procedures.


The Jacksons knew about Oxman’s reputation in the local media for unseemly
pursuit of television airtime. The family also knew, though, as did a good many
attorneys in Los Angeles, that however bad his personal judgment might be,
Oxman was a smart lawyer and a terrific researcher. When he suggested hiring a
team of private investigators to see if there were still more reasons to be suspicious
of the Michael Jackson will that Branca had submitted to Judge Beckloff, Randy
Jackson agreed and so, eventually, did the rest of the family.


In October 2009, Janet Jackson hosted the family meeting at which the contents
of the report were revealed. The very first fact laid out on the table was the most
startling: Michael Jackson had been in New York City on July 7, 2002, the date on
which, according to the handwritten annotation on the signature page of the will, he
had executed that document in Los Angeles.


The date in question had fallen right in the midst of the four days in the summer
of 2002 when Michael Jackson was laying a very public siege to Sony Music and
its chairman, Tommy Mottola, a period in which he had been seen, photographed,
and written about as he rolled up Madison Avenue in a double decker bus packed
with protesters from Harlem organized by the Reverend Al Sharpton, waving a
photograph of Mottola upon which he had drawn horns and a pitchfork. All of the
city’s daily newspapers, including the New York Times , had chronicled the entire
drama. News photographs of Michael Jackson had been taken in New York on July
6, July 8, and July 9, but, oddly, not on July 7. Michael had spent most of that
day hiding out in his hotel suite, his bodyguards said, blistered by the backlash
against him throughout the recording industry and in the national media. He had,
however, attended a meeting in Harlem during the afternoon, according to Al
Sharpton.


The private investigators had also gotten hold of the Interfor report that was
commissioned by Michael Jackson (through David LeGrand) back in late 2002.
“ Interfor’s investigation found a tight relationship between Branca and Tommy
Mottola,” the second paragraph of the report on Branca began, “ primarily in regard
to the affairs of Jackson. Interfor had begun investigating the flow of funds from
Jackson through Mottola and Branca into offshore accounts in the Caribbean,” the
company stated in the dossier provided to Jackson, but there was no actual
evidence provided to support Interfor’s claim of “ a scheme to defraud Jackson and
his empire by Mottola and Branca by diverting funds offshore.” Even Brian Oxman
recognized that Interfor was making accusations against Branca that the company
couldn’t back up, while at the same time pleading for “ additional time and a
proper budget.” What he himself could prove, though, Oxman said, was that
Michael had terminated Branca a short time after the Interfor report was delivered to
him because he firmly believed that his attorney was in cahoots with Tommy
Mottola.


All the Jacksons knew was that Michael had spent most of the next six years
insisting that he wanted nothing to do with the attorney and that no one who was
in business with him should also be in business with Branca. “ Even after Michael
died I found notes that he had written to himself,” Katherine Jackson said: “ John
Branca has nothing else to do with my business from this day on, from this day
forward, nothing.” Was it reasonable to believe that in June 2009, just days before
his death, Michael would suddenly do an about-face and hire Branca back? Taking
all of what they knew together, there was plenty of evidence to challenge John
Branca’s right to serve as the administrator of the Michael Jackson estate, Oxman
told the Jacksons. This was a winning case, in his opinion.


Armed with all the facts that Oxman and the private investigators had assembled,
it looked as if Katherine Jackson and her children might be poised to try to push
John Branca aside and seize at least partial control of the estate and its assets. The
family’s facade of a united front, though, was cracking into pieces. The world
outside the Hayvenhurst compound might not see it, but Branca did.


The weak points were several, and located mainly in the characters of the Jackson
brothers. Randy was the one pushing hardest to take Branca down,


Jermaine, as always, could be gotten to. He was weak for women, but took little
responsibility for the children they bore him. Margaret Maldonado, the former
common-law wife who had borne him two sons, said she had never received a
penny from Jermaine, even with a court order allowing her to collect it. “ I just
said, ‘Forget it,’” explained Maldonado, who supported her sons by setting up an
agency that represented photographers and stylists in Hollywood. “ It wasn’t worth
going to court and fighting with him.” Alejandra and her attorneys, though, had
kept careful track of the more than $90,000 Jermaine owed her. The estate
sent a message that it might help him earn the money to do it himself. Joel Katz
suggested that he might be able to get Jermaine a recording contract at Universal.
Branca sent a message that the estate could find a place for Jermaine in the Cirque
du Soleil show deal they were negotiating, performing live with Janet and
collecting fat checks, but of course only if he was on board with the men in charge.


We should try to work with Branca and them, Jermaine began telling Katherine.
Jackie was the son who visited Hayvenhurst most often, spending nearly every
other weekend there, and was in some sense the estate’s inside man. Jackie had
been friends with his former high school classmate John McClain since the two
were teenagers and was the one who introduced McClain to the Jackson family.


Now each nearly sixty, the two men continued to speak on the phone almost daily
and it was McClain who had helped Jackie win the right to make a profit from his
failing clothing business by selling Michael Jackson designer T-shirts. Branca and
the estate would only let Jackie sell five hundred shirts at a time, but that was
enough to bring in $10,000, $15,000, or even $20,000 a month, which was a lot
better than Jackie had been doing before. And McClain said he was working on
Branca to let Jackie expand, that it would come in time.



McClain was also talking regularly to Katherine Jackson, calling her just about
every morning to chat for a few minutes. He still called Mrs. Jackson “ Mother,”
just as he had done decades earlier, and promised that he was looking out for her
interests. According to Katherine, McClain professed to dislike Branca every bit as
much as any of the Jacksons did, and told her he was protecting her from the man
and his law dogs. “ I’m on your side, Mother,” John McClain told her. “ I’m there
for you.”


Katherine was starting to wonder. McClain had sent an air treatment system he
raved about to the Hayvenhurst estate that sat boxed in the utility room for weeks.
He kept calling to ask if the Jacksons had set it up, and “ seemed really intent on
making sure they did,” a family advisor said. Suspicious that there was some sort
of listening device secreted inside, Joe and Randy had convinced Katherine to move
the box, still unopened, out into the garage.


Unable to comprehend the financial analysis of the estate submitted by Branca
and his cocounsels, Katherine’s confidence in her own representation was being
shaken by the constant complaints of Joe and Randy Jackson. Her probate attorney
Burt Levitch, widely regarded as one of the best lawyers in Los Angeles, was
actually preparing to take exactly the sort of aggressive actions Joe and Randy
urged, including one court filing that accused the executors of submitting a
fraudulent will and another that demanded the appointment of a Jackson family
member as the estate’s third executor. Doubts about what Levitch was up to
intensified within the Jackson family during October when the estate requested a
hearing on its motion to greatly expand the powers of Branca and McClain,
allowing the two executors the right to negotiate deals and settle debts at their own
discretion. Not long after the hearing was scheduled, Randy Jackson convinced his
mother to fire Levitch for dragging his feet and to hire Adam Streisand, a partner at
Loeb and Loeb who had been involved in courtroom battles over more celebrity
estates than just about any other lawyer in the country, including those of Marlon
Brando, Ray Charles, William Randolph Hearst, and Michael Crichton. That
Streisand was best known as a litigator appeared to signal that Mrs. Jackson was
about to go to war. The new man didn’t exactly get off to a scintillating start in his
first appearance as Katherine’s attorney, though, when Streisand missed most of the
October 22 hearing at which Judge Beckloff had already agreed to expand the
administrative powers of Branca and McClain. After listening to Howard Weitzman
explain that the executors had initiated deals that would bring in at least $100
million in earnings to the estate, much of that money resulting from the This Is It
movie that would premiere the following week, Beckloff ruled that the pair should
have greater freedom to settle with creditors and negotiate new contracts. “ I want
this estate to move forward,” the judge said.

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