Michael Jackson's life to be laid bare once more in $40bn court battle Katherine Jackson's lawsuit claims AEG pressured Michael to breaking point while he prepared for his comeback tour in 2009. The trial has yet to start but already the fans, the satellite trucks and the cameras have staked out the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles for what promises to be Michael Jackson's last and most melancholy show. Jackson died four years ago but rival legal teams are preparing to pitch competing versions of his demise in a $40bn lawsuit which will put Jackson's private and public dramas back in the spotlight. A bizarre jailhouse serenade on CNN on Tuesday night by Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted in Jackson's death, augured a potentially macabre circus to come. The disgraced doctor sang Nat King Cole's The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot in an interview with Anderson Cooper to stress his love for Jackson. Details of Jackson's drug-taking, mental state and lowest moments, including the child molestation charges, are due to be scrutinised anew in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Jackon's mother, Katherine, against the concert promoter AEG Live. She claims the company was negligent in hiring Murray to care for her son, and pressured Jackson to breaking point while he prepared for a planned series of 50 This Is It comeback shows starting in July 2009 in in London. The $40bn figure is for forfeited earnings and other damages. AEG Live claims Jackson hired Murray, pictured, and that the company could not have anticipated the doctor would prescribe a lethal dose of the surgical anaesthetic propofol for Jackson's insomnia. He died at his home in Los Angeles two weeks before the first scheduled concert. Jury selection began on Tuesday in advance of a trial expected to last months and to include testimony from Murray as well as Jackson's mother and children, Prince, 16, and Paris, who turns 15 on Wednesday. If superior court judge Yvette Palazuelos grants CNN and NBC's request to broadcast live from the courtroom, viewers will have a ringside seat to a tale of greed and duplicity. The question facing jurors - prospective jurors were quizzed about their attitudes to the performer's life and music - will be to decide whose greed and duplicity. That of the Jackson family in trying to squeeze the equivalent of Kenya's GDP from the concert promoter? Or that of AEG Live in denying culpability in the 50-year-old singer's death? "I don't know how you can't look to Mr Jackson's responsibility there," AEG's lawyer, Marvin Putnam, told CNN in a pre-emptive media blitz. The singer had selected Murray himself and was known for eccentric behaviour, he said. We're talking about Michael Jackson. This is a man who would show up in pyjamas. This is a man who would stop traffic and get out and dance on top of his car. This is a man who would go to public events with a monkey named Bubbles. This is a man who said he slept in an oxygen chamber. AEG Live's lawyers have signalled they will revisit charges that Jackson molested a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland ranch because it was relevant to his history of drug abuse and psychiatric problems. Jackson was cleared but the case shredded his reputation. The AEG team has opposed the request to televise the trial and, have voiced concern that Jackson's children will testify solely to whip up emotions. Jackson family lawyers, who favour the broadcasts, have signalled they will cast the concert promoter as an avaricious corporate bully. A key part of their case is an email the promoter's co-CEO, Paul Gongaware, wrote to show director Kenny Ortega 11 days before Jackson's death amid doubts over his ability to perform. We want to remind [Murray] that it is AEG, not MJ, who is paying his salary. We want to remind him what is expected of him. Ortega, in an email to AEG Live's president, Randy Phillips, worried about the star shivering during rehearsals. It is like there are two people there. One (deep inside) trying to hold on to what he was, and still can be, and not wanting us to quit him; the other in this weakened and troubled state. I believe we need professional guidance in this matter. Ortega said Jackson had "strong signs of paranoia, anxiety and obsessive-like behavior" and recommended urgent psychiatric help. Murray, who was accused of indulging Jackson's demand for drugs while earning $150,000 month as his personal physician, will be the most eagerly awaited witness. He pleaded the fifth amendment during his own trial in 2011 and was sentenced to four years for involuntary manslaughter. In his phone call to CNN he conveyed his version. My entire approach may not have been an orthodox approach, but my intentions were good. He said other doctors routinely had prescribed Jackson propofol and it was his bad luck to be on duty when it went wrong. I did not agree with Michael, but Michael felt that it was not an issue because he had been exposed to it for years and he knew exactly how things worked ... Michael Jackson was not the kind of person you can just say 'Put it down' and he's going to do that. He said he would testify for the Jackson family even though the late singer would not have approved of the trial. Michael would be absolutely upset, he would be so unhappy with what is happening. Michael said to me 'I no longer want to be a bank for my family.' All we see is the continuation of that. Murray then sang the Cole Porter song to underline, he said, his humble roots and empathy with Jackson.