Lawsuits in the Live Events Industry

The first case I'm going to talk about, was the class-action lawsuit filed by Ticketmaster, which is the subsidiary of powerhouse Live Nation. In 2003, the law suit was filed by the two plaintiffs in the Los Angeles Supreme court and granted class-action status in September, accusing Ticketmaster of misleading customers when it tacked on $14.50 to $25 in delivery fees. Ticketmaster tried to cover up the mess by saying, that the fees simply covered the cost of delivering tickets to the customers when in fact it was designed to boost the profits of the company. In December of 2010, both parties agreed to settle the lawsuit. A total of $22.3 million was set aside to cover legal fees and to reimburse customers that were affected by this situation. It seems that both parties decided to negotiate a fee that could be paid instead of letting the case drag on in court. This would be an example of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Further more Live Nation went on to reduce its fourth quarter earnings to the same amount, plus another  $5 million to restructure the concert business in North America.

Another lawsuit, which was filed recently, involved Kevin Faraday. This was filed at the New York Supreme Court. Kevin claims to have suffered injury while standing in the crowd at the Hammerstein Ballroom, where the 'Making the Band' (Reality TV series hosted/produced by P. Diddy) episodes were being taped. Kevin was suing a long list of defendants over the incident. These include Diddy, MTV, Live Nation and a bunch of other companies and people. Live nation insists that they are innocent in this matter. According to Live Nation, "if Kevin did actually hurt himself, it was probably his own fault. But, Diddy, MTV and others also had an obligation to prevent this kind of thing from happening and they failed to do so". In my personal opinion, I feel that Live Nation was wrongfully accused as they played their part in setting up the event and that is all they are really responsible for. Anything that occurs after that is in the hands of MTV and Diddy, since they are the main players of this show.


The final case I am going to talk about was between two New Jersey concert promoters that sued Live Nation over a state fair. They claim that Live Nation used threats and coercion to prevent these promoters from booking acts for last summers state fair. Thomas Dorfman and Chris Barrett, who are partners at Juice Entertainment in Saddle Brook, claimed they lost their contract with the fair's management due to Live Nations' interference. The lawsuit states that the company Juice lost more than $75,000, making this a federal case. The lawsuit claims that Live Nation, which is the world's largest concert promoter and tickets distributor persuaded performers into not signing with Juice to appear at the fair and also threatened to withhold its ticketing services to the venue - the state-owned Meadowland's sports complex - if Live Nation was not allowed to be a partner. 


Sources:
1) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/01/live-nation-settles-class-action-lawsuit-over-fees-reduces-earnings-estimate.html


2) http://www.tmz.com/2012/01/03/live-nation-diddy-mtv-kevin-faraday-making-the-band-lawsuit/#.Ty_FpERWGRs


3) http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/two_nj_concert_promoters_sue_l.html