Joel Ryan/AP
‘Man in the Mirror’ singer Michael Jackson ‘looked great’ during an April 2009 meeting, according to physician Allan Metzger.
The defense rested Wednesday in the months-long saga of Michael Jackson’s wrongful death trial, and both sides agreed to start closing arguments Monday.
Jurors are expected to get the case Wednesday, a lawyer for Katherine Jackson told the Daily News.
Concert promoter AEG Live wrapped its defense with videotaped testimony from Jackson’s longtime physician, Allan Metzger, portraying the King of Pop as a highly secretive “doctor shopper” who asked for intravenous sleep medication at a private meeting two months before his June 2009 death.
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Los Angeles Police Det. Scott Smith then took the stand as Katherine Jackson’s first rebuttal witness and said an AEG lawyer interviewed after the “Thriller” singer’s death said Jackson’s “This Is It” concert series in London was expected to grow into a world tour lasting two or three years.
A lawyer for the singer’s mom said Metzger might be a second rebuttal witness called to testify in person Thursday. Either way, the jury that started hearing the case in April is expected to begin deliberations after both sides deliver four-hour closing statements starting Monday.
Katherine Jackson, 83, has attended much of the testimony over the last five months and was in court Wednesday as Metzger described his decades of treatment of her son.
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She and Jackson’s three kids are suing AEG for damages potentially topping $1 billion, saying the concert giant negligently hired Dr. Conrad Murray, the doctor who overdosed the pop icon.
Murray is serving four years in prison for recklessly giving Jackson propofol — a surgery-strength anesthetic — in a private bedroom without proper monitoring.
In his testimony videotaped last year, Metzger said he was “ecstatic” when Jackson invited him to his rented mansion in April 2009 because they hadn’t seen each other in several years, even though Metzger was best man at Jackson’s 1996 wedding to Debbie Rowe.
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“(Michael) inquired about intravenous sleep medication,” Metzger wrote in a log of the April 2009 meeting read by AEG lawyer Marvin Putnam. “I explained this was dangerous and potentially life-threatening and should not be done outside of the hospital.”
Metzger said Jackson “looked great” during the meeting, appearing skinny but muscular with a “lucid” demeanor and “bright” eyes.
He said over the years, Jackson liked to “surprise” him with cosmetic procedures and “never” volunteered information about treatment received elsewhere.
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“(He was) secretive about medicine, secretive about procedures, secretive about all kinds of stuff, that was part of his mystique,” Metzger said. “I was worried about someone giving him something that could intermix with something else.”
He also described Jackson as a devoted dad and loving son, but he called him a “doctor shopper” multiple times.
“Michael would seek out avenues of sleep helpers and that’s another aspect of his secrecy. I never knew what he was doing,” Metzger said.
ndillon@nydailynews.com
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