Golf-Obsession drove Aussie Batibasaga to mental institution

MELBOURNE, Nov 18 (Reuters) – The desire to improve can drive professional athletes to distraction, but for Australian golfer Rika Batibasaga it became a dangerous obsession that saw him handcuffed and thrown into a Florida mental institution.

In 2008, Batibasaga, whose father played international rugby for Fiji, was a 21-year-old living in Florida and grafting on the Nationwide Tour when his world spectacularly imploded.

“I was living away from home for the first time and it all got too much for me,” Batibasaga told Reuters at the Australian Masters in Melbourne on Sunday.

“I had a psychotic episode – it’s called psychosis. I lost the plot because of a lack of sleep – just due to stress.

“And I couldn’t control it and basically just flipped it out.”

Like hundreds of other young talents drawn to the United States to chase their dreams, Batibasaga felt hard work would prove the difference after he carried countryman and former house-mate Jason Day’s bag at a local tournament.

Feeling his game was not far off the professionals in that tournament, Batibasaga threw himself into a punishing training regime of 10-hour days hitting hundreds of balls, followed by running and gym sessions.

“It was stupid. It became an obsession. I felt I needed to push it a lot harder because I was almost there,” he recalled.

“But my brain just wouldn’t turn off and I would just get so frustrated and angry.

“When I went two or three days without sleep, I panicked and that it made it even worse. It just sort of snowballed.”

Into his sixth consecutive day without sleep, Batibasaga snapped.

Wearing just a pair of underwear, he jumped into a car belonging to the owner of the Orlando house he was living in and crashed it in the garage.

He jumped into another car, this one his house mate’s, and was arrested by police in front of Universal Studios.

“They both had their guns out. I guess it’s just America and they love pulling a gun on someone,” Batibasaga, an affable 25-year-old with a wispy beard, laughed.

“I was just driving around, I had no idea where I was going. I was in no state to drive.

“They put me in an ambulance, they obviously thought I was on drugs. They knocked me out at the hospital and I woke up feeling fine.”

With no phone or identification cards, Batibasaga was taken to a mental hospital where he spent “probably the scariest two days” of his life before being checked out.

The same problems came back to haunt him later, though, and he returned home for further treatment and a course of prescription drugs at a Brisbane hospital where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Batibasaga, who made the cut in his debut Australian Masters, has not suffered any further mental illness, and has learnt to take a more measured approach to success and failure.

He continues to grind on the minor tours but has shown signs of his promise, winning A$ 18,459 ($ 19,000) at the European Tour co-sanctioned Perth International last month for finishing joint 25th.

Batibasaga still has the green uniform from the Lakeside mental institution in Florida as a souvenir and wore it out to a New Year’s Eve party.

He says dozens of young golfers struggling to make the step up to the A-grade suffer from anxiety and depression that borders and often crosses over into mental illness.

“It’s rife. Because you’re always by yourself and if you’re not playing well, you go back to your hotel alone,” he said.

“When things aren’t going well, that’s when it’s tough.” ($ 1 = 0.9702 Australian dollars) (Editing by Nick Mulvenney)

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NY Times article questions what CEO knew of BBC sex scandal: can Mark Thompson survive?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The New York Times has turned its guns on one of its own, and right about now Mark Thompson must be looking for somewhere in the corporate suite to hide.

In a devastating article, the paper of record raises questions about what its newly minted chief executive officer knew about a pedophilia scandal at the BBC and when he knew it. Thompson stepped down as BBC director-general in September and assumed his new perch at The Times on Monday.

Yet his cross-Atlantic transition has been turbulent. He has found himself dogged by the scandal engulfing the BBC after allegations emerged that he tried to prevent an exposé by one of the network’s investigative programs into claims that children’s TV host Jimmy Savile routinely coerced teenage girls into having sex. Savile, who died in 2011, was one of the BBC’s biggest stars.

Thompson has maintained that he learned of the claims against Savile after leaving the BBC, but a legal letter indicates that he was aware of the accusations before he stepped down from his post, according to the article in The Times. In the piece, reporter Matthew Purdy writes that lawyers representing Thompson threatened to sue The Sunday Times over an article it was writing that claimed he had squelched his network’s investigative report on Savile’s sexual behavior. The letter was sent 10 days before Thompson resigned from the BBC.

The Sunday Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and is based in the United Kingdom.

“There were other moments during Mr. Thompson’s final months at the BBC – involving brief conversations and articles appearing in London news media – when he might have picked up on the gravity of the Savile case,” Purdy writes. “But the letter is different because it shows Mr. Thompson was involved in an aggressive action to challenge an article about the case that was likely to reflect poorly on the BBC and on him.”

The letter purportedly included a summary of Savile’s alleged abuses. The Times reports that an aide to Thompson said he authorized the letter orally, but was not fully informed about its contents.

After the story broke, speculation mounted on Twitter among media watchers that Thompson’s position at The Times might be in jeopardy.

“The odds on Mark Thompson staying as CEO of the New York Times just changed,” Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, tweeted.

At the very least, it appears that reporters at the paper have taken to heart Public Editor Margaret Sullivan’s charge to cover the BBC scandal aggressively.

“As the BBC has found out in the most painful way, for The Times to pull its punches will not be a wise way to go,” Sullivan wrote.

As Thompson, still nursing Purdy’s uppercut, just found out, The Times looks ready to put some muscle into it.

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Monti repeats Italy does not need euro zone aid

MILAN (Reuters) – Prime Minister Mario Monti rejected suggestions on Saturday that Italy should seek aid from its euro zone partners to bind a new government to strict reform conditions after elections likely to be held in March.

Monti’s comments, in a panel discussion at Milan’s Bocconi University, follow growing speculation that he might try to use an aid program to guarantee that his broad economic agenda is continued once his term in office ends.

He said he had nothing against mechanisms including the special euro zone bailout fund and the European Central Bank’s bond-buying program to help governments that have undertaken budget and economic reforms but he said he would like to see other countries resort to such assistance.

“I don’t think Italy needs it, nor will need it,” he said in answer to a question during the discussion.

Italy’s borrowing costs have come down sharply since the ECB announced its so-called “Outright Monetary Transactions” plan in September. The yield on its 10-year BTPs is now just under 5 percent, well below a high of over 7 percent when Monti came to office during the height of the financial crisis a year ago.

Monti also defended his government’s decision to stick to the goal of a balanced budget, in structural or growth-adjusted terms, by 2013, despite the strain the objective imposes on Italy’s recession-hit economy.

He said the government had considered asking for more time to meet the objective but had decided not to.

“I have not regretted not asking for it,” he said, noting that a number of other euro zone countries had delayed budget deficit reduction targets and that Italy would not have seen its own interest rates fall if it had done the same.

The discussion came on the same day the government issued a 17-page account of its year in office which emphasized the international credibility Italy gained after Monti took over from the scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi.

CREDIBILITY

With the countdown to elections now on following President Giorgio Napolitano’s indication on Friday of a possible date of March 10, attention has focused on what will come after.

Opinion polls suggest that a center-left government of some form is the most likely outcome, but the political parties have yet to choose their main candidates or even decide under what voting system the ballot will be held.

Much attention has been focused on the possibility that Monti himself may return at the head of a broad-based reform coalition if the election fails to produce a clear winner.

His government has been widely praised abroad and the former European commissioner has strong support among business leaders, but the painful tax hikes and spending cuts imposed by his government have also sparked anger among ordinary Italians.

On Saturday, students protested outside the university buildings where Monti was speaking and two policemen were injured by firecrackers.

Monti, who said his record in office was neither as good as his many international admirers believed nor as bad as the critics among his fellow economists claimed, has said repeatedly that he would be available to serve if needed.

But he repeated that he had no plans to run in the election himself. “Noone has asked me for a commitment and I’m not committing myself today,” he said.

At a separate event in Rome, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the chairman of sportscar maker Ferrari, who leads a civil movement aimed at promoting reform, praised Monti but said that he did not expect him to take a political lead.

“We are not asking the premier today to assume the leadership of this political movement because it would prejudice his work,” he said.

(Writing By James Mackenzie; editing by Jason Webb)

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Jamaica to abolish slavery-era flogging law

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica is preparing to abolish a slavery-era law allowing flogging and whipping as means of punishing prisoners, the Caribbean country’s justice ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said the punishment hasn’t been ordered by a court since 2004 but the statutes remain in the island’s penal code. It was administered with strokes from a tamarind-tree switch or a cat o’nine tails, a whip made of nine, knotted cords.

Justice Minister Mark Golding says the “degrading” punishment is an anachronism which violates Jamaica’s international obligations and is preventing Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller‘s government from ratifying the U.N. convention against torture.

“The time has come to regularize this situation by getting these colonial-era laws off our books once and for all,” Golding said in a Thursday statement.

The Cabinet has already approved repealing the flogging law and amendments to other laws in the former British colony, where plantation slavery was particularly brutal.

The announcement was welcomed by human rights activists who view the flogging law as a barbaric throwback in a nation populated mostly by the descendants of slaves.

“We don’t really see that (the flogging law) has any part in the approach of dealing with crime in a modern democracy,” said group spokeswoman Susan Goffe.

But there are no shortage of crime-weary Jamaicans who feel that authorities should not drop the old statutes but instead enforce them, arguing that thieves who steal livestock or violent criminals who harm innocent people should receive a whipping to teach them a lesson.

“The worst criminals need strong punishing or else they’ll do crimes over and over,” said Chris Drummond, a Kingston man with three school-age children. “Getting locked up is not always enough.”

The last to suffer the punishment in Jamaica was Errol Pryce, who was sentenced to four years in prison and six lashes in 1994 for stabbing his mother-in-law.

Pryce was flogged the day before being released from prison in 1997 and later complained to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which ruled in 2004 that the form of corporal punishment was cruel, inhuman and degrading and violated his rights. Jamaican courts then stopped ordering whipping or flogging.

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Migration officials say cholera in Haiti on rise

GENEVA (AP) — The world’s largest agency that deals with global migration says cholera is again on the rise in Haiti.

The International Organization for Migration says Haitian officials have confirmed 3,593 cholera cases and another 837 suspected cases since Hurricane Sandy‘s passage.

IOM spokesman Jumbe Omari Jumbe told reporters Friday in Geneva “the numbers are going up” particularly in camps around the capital, Port-au-Prince.

He said his organization has responded by handing out about 10,000 cholera kits in 31 camps this week “badly hit by cholera in the area.”

Cholera is a bacterial infection that spreads through water, and Haiti’s lack of proper sanitation and sewage systems makes the country more vulnerable.

Haiti was spared a direct hit from Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 24, but received heavy rain for several days.

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NBC to replace “Today Show” producer, source says

(Reuters) – NBC is expected to name Alexandra Wallace, a senior vice president of the network’s news division, as the executive in charge of “The Today Show,” the latest reshuffling of the show’s personnel after it slipped to second in ratings this year behind “Good Morning America.”

Wallace, who would be the first woman in charge of the long-running NBC show that pioneered early morning TV in the United States, will be named along with a producer to replace Jim Bell, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Bell, who has headed the show since 2005, was blamed this year for the controversial firing of Ann Curry as anchor alongside Matt Lauer.

Curry was replaced by Savannah Guthrie in June.

“Good Morning America” or GMA, produced by Walt Disney‘s ABC unit, closed the gap with “Today.”

“Today,” the top-rated morning show for 16 consecutive years, started the current TV season number two. In late October, NBC drew 7,000 more viewers than GMA among 25 to 54 year-old viewers, the age group advertisers most want to reach, its first lead since September 10. GMA still led among overall viewers.

The first two hours of “The Today Show,” from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., collected $ 485 million in ad revenues in 2011, up 6.6 percent from 2010, according to Kantar Media, which provides data to advertisers. GMA took in $ 299 million last year.

It is unclear when the changes at “The Today Show” will take effect, according to The New York Times, which first reported the shakeup.

Bell this summer produced NBC’s Summer Olympics coverage and is expected to become the full-time executive producer of the network’s ongoing Olympic coverage.

NBC, a unit of Comcast Corp., is also in the midst of layoffs at its entertainment unit, shedding 500 positions primarily at its cable channels. Jay Leno’s late night TV show cut about two dozen of its crew members about two months ago.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover)

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World stocks flat on Europe, US woes; Japan gains

BANGKOK (AP) — Trading on world stock markets was lethargic Friday after data showed Europe slipped back into recession and several big U.S. retailers disappointed investors with weak forecasts.

The European Union’s statistics agency said Thursday that the combined economy of the 17 countries that use the euro contracted 0.1 percent in the third quarter from the previous quarter. Surveys pointing to difficult conditions ahead suggest the recession could deepen.

“Although unsurprising, data in Europe confirmed that the region fell back into recession, an outcome that will do little to ease tensions,” analysts at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong said in an email commentary.

European stocks were flat in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.1 percent to 5,672.68. Germany‘s DAX was almost unchanged at 7,044.06. France‘s CAC-40 inched up less than 0.1 percent to 3,385.29.

Wall Street also flat-lined ahead of the open. Dow Jones industrial futures were almost unchanged at 12,524. S&P 500 futures inched up marginally to 1,352.10.

Trading in Asia was slightly more energetic. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.2 percent to 21,159.01. South Korea‘s Kospi fell 0.5 percent to 1,860.83. Australia‘s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.3 percent to 4,336.80.

Benchmarks in Taiwan, New Zealand and mainland China fell. The Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.8 percent to 2,014.72 and the Shenzhen Composite Index fell 0.7 percent to 800.20. Benchmarks in Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines rose.

Japan‘s Nikkei 225 stock index jumped 2.2 percent to close at 9,024.16, rallying for a second straight day on expectations that the opposition Liberal Democratic Party may win elections next month and pursue more aggressive stimulus policies than the current leadership.

LDP leader Shinzo Abe has said he is determined to push for such policies and to find ways to weaken the yen, whose strength against other currencies has hammered exporters.

Stan Shamu, strategist at IG Markets in Melbourne, said Abe wants an inflation target of between 2 and 3 percent as a way to cheapen the Japanese currency, perhaps by printing yen or bulking up on purchases of assets like Japanese government bonds. Still, the target might be difficult to achieve, given the economy’s weakness, he said.

“With such a big export economy, the yen has massive significance on how the local economy performs,” Shamu said.

Japan’s exporters, whose fortunes are linked to the yen’s valuation, were buoyed by the prospect of a changing of the guard. Mazda Motor Corp. soared 7.1 percent. Nissan Motor Co. jumped 5.1 percent. Nikon Corp. surged 7.2 percent and Canon Inc. gained 5.8 percent.

In Australia, Whitehaven Coal fell 1.8 percent after announcing it would scale back some operations due to the decline in global coal prices.

In the U.S., investors were dealt dual blows Thursday: worse-than-expected revenue from global retailing giant Wal-Mart and data showing that manufacturing weakened in the Philadelphia and New York regions, reflecting damage from Superstorm Sandy.

Wal-Mart, Ross Stores and Limited Brands, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, also disappointed investors by issuing profit forecasts that fell short of expectations.

Benchmark oil for December delivery was up 13 cents to $ 85.58 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 87 cents to close at $ 85.45 a barrel in New York on Thursday.

In currencies, the dollar weakened to 80.98 yen from 81.21 yen late Thursday in New York. The euro fell to $ 1.2748 from $ 1.2773.

___

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Canada’s Carney says rate hikes “less imminent”

TORONTO (Reuters) – Interest rate hikes have become less imminent than the Bank of Canada once expected, although rates are still likely to rise, central bank Governor Mark Carney said in an interview published on Saturday.

“Over time, rates are likely to increase somewhat, but over time, so a less imminent timing relative to our expectation,” Carney said in an interview with the National Post newspaper.

Canada’s economy rebounded better than most from the global economic recession, and the Bank of Canada is the only central bank in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that is currently hinting at higher interest rates.

But Carney has also made clear that there will be no rate rise for a while, despite high domestic borrowing rates that he sees as a major risk to a still fragile economy.

“We’ve been very clear in terms of lines of defense in addressing financial vulnerabilities,” he said in the interview. “And the most prominent one, obviously, in Canada, is household debt.”

He said the bank was monitoring the impact of four successive government moves to tighten mortgage lending, which aimed to take the froth out of a hot housing market without causing a damaging crash in prices.

A Reuters poll published on Friday showed the majority of 20 forecasters believe the government has done enough to rein in runaway prices, preventing the type of crash that devastated the U.S. market.

The experts expect Canadian housing prices to fall 10 percent over the next several years, but they do not expect the recent property boom to end in a U.S.-style collapse.

(Reporting by Janet Guttsman; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Congress, Obama face dynamite in “fiscal cliff”: CEOs

BOSTON (Reuters) – Corporate America is raising the volume of its plea that the U.S. government avert a year-end “fiscal cliff” that could send the nation back into recession, but chief executives aren’t pushing the panic button just yet.

With a heated election season in the rear-view mirror, executives are calling on the White House and congressional leaders to head off a self-imposed deadline that could bring $ 600 billion in spending cuts and higher taxes early in 2013 if they are unable to reach a deal on cutting the federal budget deficit.

The Business Roundtable on Tuesday kicked off a print, radio and online ad campaign on which it plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars featuring the chiefs of Honeywell International Inc , Xerox Corp and United Parcel Service Inc calling on lawmakers to resolve the issue.

In an opinion piece published on Tuesday evening on the Wall Street Journal’s website, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein urged the business community and the Obama administration to compromise and reconcile so as not to derail the fragile recovery.

One of the more dramatic warnings of the consequences of allowing the U.S. economy to go over the fiscal cliff came from Honeywell CEO David Cote.

“If the last debt ceiling discussion was playing with fire, this time they’re playing with nitroglycerin,” Cote said in an interview. “If they go off the cliff, I think it would spark a recession that’s a lot bigger than economists think. Some think it would just be a small fire. I think it could turn into a conflagration.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the U.S. economy would contract 0.5 percent in 2013 if the government fails to stop the budget cuts and tax increases – far below the 2 percent growth economists currently forecast.

A failure in Washington to solve the crisis by the year’s end could prompt major companies to curtail investment plans, said Duncan Niederauer, CEO of NYSE Euronext , operator of the New York Stock Exchange.

“We simply won’t be investing in the United States. We will be investing elsewhere where we have more certainty of the outcome,” Niederauer said in an interview.

About a dozen top U.S. CEOs, including General Electric Co’s Jeff Immelt, Aetna Inc’s Mark Bertolini, American Express Co’s Ken Chenault and Dow Chemical Co’s Andrew Liveris are scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama on Wednesday to discuss the issue.

The four are members of “Fix the Debt,” an ad-hoc lobbying organization that this week launched an advertising campaign that advocates long-term debt reduction.

UNCERTAINTY FACTOR

Bank of America Corp CEO Brian Moynihan said on Tuesday that worries about the cliff have companies holding off on spending.

“That uncertainty continues to hold back the recovery,” Moynihan said, speaking at an investor conference in New York.

Sandy Cutler, CEO of manufacturer Eaton Corp , shared his concern.

“Until we solve the fiscal issues (in the United States and Europe), you’re not going to get back to normal GDP growth,” Cutler told investors on Tuesday.

CEOs are not alone in this worry. The CBO report warned that failure to reach a deal could push the U.S. unemployment rate up to 9.1 percent, the highest since July 1991. It is currently 7.9 percent.

Obama and the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives have signaled a more conciliatory tone since last week’s election, when Obama soundly defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney, whose party retained a majority in the House.

Wilbur Ross, an investor known for taking stakes in distressed companies, is bracing for higher tax rates in 2013.

“We, like many people, have been trying to utilize gains this year. It does seem that the probability is that rates will go up,” Ross said in an interview with Reuters Insider. “We don’t have a “for sale” sign on anything. But we are mindful that there is a benefit to concluding things this year rather than next.

NO SIGNS OF PANIC

Concerns about the cliff have not prompted customers to cancel orders, though they have added to an overall level of uneasiness that has companies wary of making large capital purchases or hiring significant numbers of new workers.

“We haven’t seen the panicking, like, ‘I’m not going to order something because of the fiscal cliff,’” said Steve Shawley, chief financial officer of heating and cooling systems maker Ingersoll Rand Plc . “Customers are being very judicious with their orders.”

Likewise, JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon last month told investors he did not expect the negotiations to hurt lending in the fourth quarter.

“The fiscal cliff isn’t going to change us,” Dimon said, referring to JPMorgan’s commercial bank, which loans money to businesses. The bank’s investment banking side could be more vulnerable if the debate makes investors jittery, he allowed.

WEAPONS, MEDICINES IN THE CROSS-HAIRS

The defense and healthcare sectors are the most vulnerable to the fiscal cliff, as they face the threat of sequestration — automatic, across-the-board cuts to their funding.

Makers of weapons systems note that they have long been preparing for declining sales as the United States winds down two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The industry has already shed tens of thousands of jobs and closed facilities.

Lockheed Martin Corp’s new president and chief operating officer, Marillyn Hewson, told analysts on Monday her company had been preparing for tighter defense budgets for years, even before the sequestration deal.

“We aren’t going to see a major change,” said Hewson. “We’ve been very proactive as a leadership team in taking actions in recent years to address our cost structure, to look at how we can make our product more affordable.”

Automatic cuts to the federal budget could reduce federal health spending by $ 21.5 billion in 2013, potentially affecting everything from Medicare to the Food and Drug Administration, according to an analysis by PwC’s Health Research Institute.

Vincent Forlenza, the CEO of Becton Dickinson & Co , said the labs he supplies have held off on buying new instruments because of the threat of spending cuts.

“If we don’t get to a deal we will have another year of paralysis and putting off research,” Forlenza said. “The impact of uncertainty on the (National Institutes of Health) budget is causing our research customers to put off research.”

(The story corrects spelling of company name in penultimate paragraph to “Becton Dickinson” instead of “Beckton Dickinson”)

(Additional reporting by John McCrank, Nick Zieminski, Caroline Humer, Jed Horowitz, Sharon Begley and Daniel Wilchins in New York, Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina, Nichola Groom in Los Angeles, Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington, Debra Sherman in Chicago and Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by Patricia Kranz and Steve Orlofsky and Carol Bishopric)

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Michael Jackson’s assistant files class-action lawsuit against “This Is It” tour promoter

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Michael Jackson has been dead for more than three years now – but apparently he lives on in the halls of America’s legal system.

Jackson’s former assistant, Michael Amir Williams, filed a class-action lawsuit against concert promoters AEG Live in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday, claiming he and others hired to attend to the “Beat It” singer during his would-be “This Is It” tour at London’s O2 Arena were deprived of at least $ 7.5 million dollars in pay.

According to the suit, AEG was responsible for the financial loss because it hired Dr. Conrad Murray — who was found guilty of causing the singer’s death – to care for Jackson.

The suit claims that Jackson “bargained for the addition of Class to help Michael Jackson give the ‘first class performance’ as required by Contract. The express terms of the Contract allowed for class to be paid by AEG up to $ 7.5 million and any amount over $ 7.5 million to be paid for by Michael Jackson.”

Unfortunately, AEG also hired Murray, who administered a fatal dose of Propofol to Jackson in June 2009, before the concerts could take place. (Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for Jackson’s death in November 2011.)

AEG’s lawyer, Marvin Putnam of O’Melveny & Myers, calls the lawsuit “frivolous” and “truly unfortunate.”

“This lawsuit is clearly frivolous; it is literally barred by at least four different legal doctrines,” Putnam said in a statement provided to TheWrap. “The easiest is that Mr. Williams was a personal employee of Michael Jackson’s, and was never a beneficiary of Mr. Jackson’s contract with AEG Live. As such he has no legal standing to sue on that contract. Nor can he legally bring a claim for Mr. Jackson’s wrongful death. The idea that Mr. Williams purports to sue on behalf of the many persons who did enter into relationships with AEG Live and Jackson in connection with the This Is It Tour, and with whom AEG Live parted ways with the utmost friendship and respect, is disgraceful. It is truly unfortunate that so many see Mr. Jackson’s demise as an opportunity to grab as much for themselves as possible. This is just the latest wrongful death lawsuit with someone hoping to profit from Michael Jackson’s tragic death in the same way they profited from his life.”

Williams’ suit alleges breach of express terms of contract; breach of implied terms of contract; and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The complaint seeks unspecified damages, plus court costs and attorneys’ fees.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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