Michael Jackson's mother quizzed by promoter's lawyer

Michael Jackson denied abusing drugs despite at least one family "intervention" before his 2009 death, his mother said Monday as she was grilled by lawyers for his doomed last tour's promoters. Eighty-three year-old Katherine Jackson also rebuffed a question about the amount of money she is seeking in damages from AEG Live, saying: "You can talk to my lawyers about that." She recalled the only time she asked her son about widespread rumors that he was abusing drugs. "Well I'm his mother and quite naturally he denied because he wouldn't want me to think that...he's not going to admit that," she said, adding that she knew he was taking prescription painkillers. "I knew he was taking them. I didn't think he might have been abusing them," she added, recounting the exchange with her son at his Las Vegas home, some time after he returned from living abroad following his 2005 child molestation trial. The Jackson family matriarch accuses AEG Live of pushing her son too hard as he rehearsed in Los Angeles for a series of "This is It" comeback concerts in London, and of negligently hiring doctor Conrad Murray to look after him.Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011 over Jackson's June 25, 2009 death from an overdose of the surgical anaesthetic propofol, administered to help the 50-year-old singer with chronic insomnia. Jackson's 16-year-old son Prince testified last month his exhausted father warned AEG Live was going to "kill" him as he rehearsed for the marathon concert tour. Katherine Jackson wept in court on the first day of testimony Friday, which was cut short when she appeared confused, a short time after AEG Live's lawyer Marvin Putnam began questioning her. On Monday Putnam resumed his examination. In tense exchanges, he asked her about the figure of $1.5-1.7 billion she was reportedly seeking in damages from the tour promoter. "You can talk to my lawyers about that," she said icily. The $1.5 billion figure was given at the start of the trial as an evaluation of lost income and an unspecified amount for emotional loss and other damages caused by Jackson's death. Jackson was widely reported to have huge debts after his career imploded due to the child molestation scandal. The London shows -- expected to be followed by a world tour -- would have salvaged his finances.But his mother said she did not believe he had financial problems. After initially asking Putnam "What does this have to do with the death of my son?" she said: "I heard for years that Michael was broke, and he wasn't...I didn't believe it, because he wasn't." Putnam also quizzed her at length about a family "intervention" in 2002, when she and various children including Janet and Rebbie went to confront Jackson about his reported drug problems at his Neverland ranch. But the confrontation came to nothing, she said, after the singer appeared upset when he realized why they were there. "We just saw that he was okay and he was upset, so we didn't talk about it," she said. Putnam repeated several of his questions multiple times, as Jackson -- whose voice was at times barely audible, even through a court microphone, said she either didn't understand or could not remember, at one point noting that she was 83 years old. She provoked laughter when answering a question about whether her son had ever seemed "out of it" when she spoke to him on the phone. "Out of what?" she said, before Putnam explained the meaning of the phrase.