Celebrity News

[AKA2D '91]

Michael Jackson Hospitalized Briefly


Thu May 22, 5:30 AM ET


Michael Jackson was hospitalized briefly after falling ill on the same day he was scheduled to give a deposition in a copyright lawsuit.

Jackson was hospitalized in Indianapolis on Wednesday for observation and treatment before the deposition began, Brian Oxman, an attorney for the Jackson family, told The Associated Press.

Jackson was released after a couple of hours and boarded a private jet Wednesday evening to return to Los Angeles, Jackson spokesman Stuart Backerman said.

Jackson, 44, "was not feeling well and was feeling weak," Oxman said in a telephone interview. Neither Oxman nor Jackson spokesman Stuart Backerman knew which hospital Jackson was taken to.

"He has, in some occasions in the past, not eaten when he should," Oxman said. "He can become very concerned and nervous at depositions. He doesn't like lawsuits, and it makes him ill to have to cope with litigation that people seem to heap on him."


Jackson arrived in Indianapolis on Tuesday for a deposition in a lawsuit alleging that the Jackson Five used the name of another Gary band and two of their songs without license.

The deposition was to be given in a meeting with attorney Norman Reed, who is representing Gordon Keith, the man who signed the Jackson Five to his Gary-based Steeltown Records in 1967. Keith has said he received no credit for tracks that appeared on a 1996 album, "Pre-History: The Lost Steeltown Recordings."

Robert Meyer, who represents Jackson at the Chicago law firm Swanson Martin & Bell, has declined to comment on the copyright lawsuit.

Keith and musician Elvy Woodard, accuse Michael, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon Jackson with infringing on the trade name Ripples & Waves, which was the name of another Gary band during the 1960s.