Astroworld Festival

The lawsuits that Travis Scott and Astroworld’s festival organizers have received are already in the triple digits with more on the way. This comes after the death of nine attendees at the showcase earlier this month. Hundreds more were injured as well during the festival. Travis Scott and Astroworld organizers announced that they will provide full refunds for everyone who purchased tickets to attend the show, but legal experts warn that accepting these refunds could come with irreversible consequences. Neama Rahmani, co-founder of the personal-injury firm West Coast Trial Lawyers spoke to Insider about this.

“Courts generally uphold those types of waivers,” Rahmani said. “The classic case is arbitration agreements. Everyone kind of scrolls through. No one reads the fine print, and guess what, you’ve waived your right to a jury trial, waived your right to file a lawsuit, to demand arbitration.” Legal analyst Carmen Roe had similar thoughts to Rahmani’s own, which she shared with Houston’s local station KHOU 11.

“What they need to look for specifically, is the word ‘Waiver,’ ‘Consent’ ‘Agreement’ of any kind,” Roe said when she was asked what attendees need to look for before accepting refunds. “And most importantly, they need to be concerned if they’re asked to sign anything.” She added, “Refunds should not come with a signature. So, in this particular case, Live Nation has suggested they’re going to refund these people, and that this is all going to be on the up and up. That shouldn’t require their signature under any circumstances.”

Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival unexpectedly turned into a tragedy on Friday night as it left eight people dead and hundreds more injured. Unfortunately, the number of deaths as a result of the incident has increased to nine after a 22-year-old woman who spent the past six days in the ICU passed away as a result of her injuries. Bharti Shahani’s death was confirmed by her family during a press conference on Thursday after previous reports revealed that she was showing no brain activity.

Her mother, Karishma Shahani, broke into tears as she remembered her daughter during the conference. “What happened to my blessing now,” she said. “I want my baby back. I won’t be able to live without her. It’s impossible.” Bharti’s father, Sunny Shahani, added, “Please make sure she gets justice and I don’t want somebody else’s daughter to go like this. It was the wrong day and wrong time for her.” Bharti, who was a student at Texas A&M University, had been on a ventilator since Friday night after her brain was deprived of oxygen and she suffered multiple heart attacks as a result of being crushed in the crowd at Astroworld.

Travis Scott and his team recently issued a statement to the families of Astroworld victims. “Travis Scott and his team have been actively exploring routes of connection with each and every family affected by the tragedy through the appropriate liaisons,” a press release read. “He is distraught by the situation and desperately wishes to share his condolences and provide aid to them as soon as possible, but wants to remain respectful of each family’s wishes on how they’d best like to be connected.”

The message concluded by asking the victim’s families to email [email protected] if they would like to reach out directly to his team.

In the days since the Astroworld Festival tragedy, Travis Scott has shared two statements about it on his social media pages. Now, his lawyer is stepping forward to speak about it and he’s calling out the Houston police department. In a statement released on Wednesday, according to Billboard, Edwin F. McPherson said, “There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements.” McPherson then criticized Houston Police Chief Troy Finner for comments he made in a recent interview with The New York Times.

During the interview, McPherson cites Finner’s claim that Astroworld was not shut down for fear that fans would riot. However, McPherson said, “a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.”

“It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew,” McPherson said. “This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019.”

He concluded, “Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.”

Travis Scott was reportedly unaware that a tragedy took place in the crowd at the Astroworld Festival until quite a while it ended. A source connected to the rapper told TMZ that he was never notified about the deaths and injuries that occurred. As a result, Travis left the premises and headed to a nearby Dave & Buster’s for a party that was hosted by Drake. “Travis didn’t know the severity of the situation when he arrived at the party,” the source told TMZ. “As far as timing, this remains consistent with the fact that no one including the police had publicly confirmed the gravity of the events that had taken place.”

Travis brought out Drake as a surprise guest at the festival, and the two performed songs including “Sicko Mode” and “Way 2 Sexy.” The TMZ report comes after Travis’ partner Kylie Jenner, who is currently pregnant with her second child with him, came to his defense about the festival.

“Travis and I are broken and devastated,” she wrote in a post to her Instagram Story. “My thoughts and prayers are with all who lost their lives, were injured or affected in any way by yesterday’s events.” She added, “And also for Travis who I know cares deeply for his fans and the Houston community, I want to make it clear we weren’t aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show, and in no world would have continued filming or performing.”