Celebrities have no right to secrets. This is all the more clear in a new case opened by Michael Jackson’s family in which they expect to be paid as much as $5 billion by AEG Live, Jackson’s tour organizer, in a wrongful death suit. AEG allegedly hired Jackson’s doctor, who has already been charged and convicted for involuntary manslaughter, and the burden of the trial is to prove that they pressured the doctor to get Jackson in performance mode, despite his own health needs.

The trial began Monday, and AEG Live’s lawyer said “we’re going to show some ugly stuff.” If you are a celebrity with an unusual death, you might roll in your grave indefinitely. Among the things likely to come up is how the trial about Jackson’s alleged pedophilia caused the rock star to use more drugs. Indeed, his addictions seemed to play a part in his death, which was ruled to be caused ultimately by sedatives and propofol, an anesthetic his doctor proscribed for Jackson to sleep each night.

The smoking gun on the Jackson side of the case is an email AEG Live Co-CEO Paul Gongaware composed a little over a week before Jackson's death, which read that “We want to remind [Murray, Jackson’s doctor] that it is AEG, not MJ, who is paying his salary, We want to remind him what is expected of him.”

That Jackson’s family members are seeking upwards of $5 billion, despite all the windfall they’ve already had from the troubled rockstar’s career, reminds me of the story from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Fisherman’s Wife, where a Fisherman is made to request more and more wealth to assuage his wife’s insatiable greed. When is enough enough? Why not open up a trial that will last months and expose all sorts of dirt and “ugliness” – just for the sake of more money? Jurors deciding, meanwhile, will make $15 dollars a day for their time. There is no privacy for celebrities. Their very lives are as entertaining as their songs, and because we pay them to be entertaining, we expect to know all their business.