Jury Weighing Outcome Of Michael Jackson Civil Lawsuit

The outcome of a court fight between Michael Jackson and a former business associate is now in the hands of a jury, as the lawyers for both sides made their closing arguments on Thursday.

Thomas Mundell, representing the troubled pop star, said that plaintiff F. Marc Schaffel can't back his claims that he's owed $1.4 million U.S. in loans and expenses. But Schaffel's attorney, Howard King, countered that his client's relationship with Jackson existed in "Michael world - a world without receipts."

Jackson has countersued Schaffel and Mundell claims that he owes the eccentric star $660,000, as the advisor took advantage of a man who's "useless in his own business matters."

King asked jurors to accept circumstantial evidence and testimony from witnesses about expenditures that Schaffel made to promote Jackson's ill-fated "What More Can I Give" charity single. Mundell claimed that Schaffel actually collected $400,000 from a Japanese company for the rights to the record and used it for a down payment on a house.

There's also the question of $300,000 that Schaffel claims to have given away, and was never fully repaid for, during a trip to South America that's wrapped in mystery. The former adult video distributor said in court that he was once sent to help Jackson adopt boys in Brazil, which the singer's team denounced as a smear. In Jackson's child molestation case last year, the prosecution claimed that there was a plan to relocate a family that had made accusations against him to Brazil.

King asserted that Jackson's attorneys never asked the purpose of the trip to South America.

"They either know precisely why this money was delivered or they don't want to know and they don't want you to know," he told the jury.

Schaffel had initially sued for $3.8 million, but the claims were reduced to $1.6 million, and King lowered the number to $1.4 million on Thursday.

The judge told the 12 jurors that only nine of them had to agree on any cause of action to reach a verdict, but the same nine didn't have to agree on each action. A five-page verdict form included a number of questions that the jury must answer relating to Schaffel's original suit and Jackson's countersuit.