Live Nation

Rolling Stone reports that in the wake of the Astroworld Festival tragedy earlier this year, concert promoter Live Nation strong-armed Astroworld’s staff into signing liability waivers or risk not getting paid. According to an email acquired by Rolling Stone, just hours after 9-year-old Ezra Blount, the youngest of the festival’s 10 victims, was reported dead from injuries sustained in the crowd crush during Travis Scott’s headlining set, Live Nation had sent part-time employees a revised employment contract promising not to sue Live Nation or its Scoremore subsidiary. However, two security guards have already done so, suggesting that not everyone signed the documents.

The original contract was the same one from the 2018 festival, even still bearing the year of the fest’s inauguration at the top. However, the new ones sent on November 15 amended the error, claiming that the employees would need it to receive their $7.50/hour paychecks for tasks like checking wristbands. The new contracts’ text was duplicated in Rolling Stone:

(Employee) assumes full responsibility for any injuries or damages that may occur to the (employee) in, on or about the festival and its premises and fully and forever releases and discharges the released parties from any and all claims, demands, damages, rights of action or causes of action resulting from or arising out of the (employee’s) attending and or providing services at the festival.

The amended contracts also denied employees medical coverage or other benefits, including workers’ compensation. According to the employee who brought the email to Rolling Stone‘s attention, “It was a free for all. I saw a girl trying to run through. She got crushed. I saw kids getting knocked out. It definitely felt like there wasn’t nearly enough security to contain the rush of the fans.” There’s also a pretty harrowing firsthand account of the chaos during Travis’ closing set that frankly, sounds terrifying.

Both Live Nation and Travis Scott have denied liability in the dozens of lawsuits filed by survivors and victims’ families, despite reports that Travis had continued performing long after the concert was declared a mass casualty event.

You can read Rolling Stone’s full report here.

Just days after the plaintiffs and defendants in the nearly 300 cases against the Astroworld Festival’s organizers agreed to consolidate those cases into one proceeding, another lawsuit was filed representing over 1,500 new plaintiffs, doubling the total to almost 2,800 people suing Live Nation and Travis Scott. Billboard reports that the massive group is represented by Brent Coon, a personal injury lawyer based in Beaumont, Texas. Coon’s press release announcing the suit read, “What happened at Astroworld was an unconscionable tragedy and it is important that justice is served for all those impacted,” but few details were revealed about the suit.

Meanwhile, Billboard also recently reported that with over 275 cases pending, the Astroworld organizers’ lawyers agreed with the plaintiffs’ representatives that all the cases would be consolidated under just one judge in order to simplify what is already a complex case. A filing read, “Transfer of all of these lawsuits to a single pretrial judge for consolidated and coordinated pretrial proceedings will eliminate duplicative discovery, conserve resources of the judiciary, avoid conflicting legal rulings and scheduling, and otherwise promote the just and efficient conduct of all actions.”

The new case will likely be folded into that same multi-district litigation. Meanwhile, Astroworld’s organizers have both secured their representation for the upcoming battle, with Live Nation tapping Susman Godfrey and Travis Scott securing Daniel Petrocelli, who previously defended Donald Trump against a fraud lawsuit over his real estate seminars.

The Houston Chronicle reports Live Nation and Travis Scott, under fire for the recent disaster at the Astroworld Festival last month, have made a prominent hire as they prepare to defend themselves from a deluge of cases from injured attendees and the families of the 10 people who died as a result of the crowd crush at Astroworld.

Scott has tapped global corporate law firm O’Melveny & Myers’ head of litigation Daniel Petrocelli, who is best known for representing Fred Goldman in the 1997 trial against OJ Simpson for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. OJ was found liable in that case, despite being previously acquitted for the murders in a criminal trial.

It was Petrocelli who reached out to the families of victims who died at the festival with the offer to cover funeral costs; however, half the families, including that of 9-year-old Ezra Blount, rejected the offer, writing in response, “[Scott] must face and hopefully see that he bears some of the responsibility for this tragedy. There may be, and I hope there is, redemption and growth for him on the other side of what this painful process will be – and perhaps one day, once time allows some healing for the victims and acceptance of responsibility by Mr. Scott and others, Treston and Mr. Scott might meet – as there is also healing in that.”

Meanwhile, Live Nation’s head defender will be the Susman Godfrey law firm, prompting the lawyer representing about 75 victims to say, “For Live Nation to hire the Susman firm shows that the company knows it is in deep trouble and is preparing for a bet-the-company litigation fight.”

According to the Chronicle, more than 120 lawsuits have been filed by about 600 plaintiffs seeking damages totaling over $3 billion. The cases may be consolidated in order to manage the caseload.

The latest reported Astroworld lawsuit comes from the family of a 14-year-old high school freshman who was killed at the festival along with nine others including a nine-year-old boy and a man who died trying to pull his fiancee out of the surging crowd. According to People, the family of John Hilgert seeks $1 million in damages while condemning the “gross negligence” of the festival’s organizers and promoters, including Live Nation and Scoremore.

“Defendants egregiously failed in their duty to protect the health, safety, and lives of those in attendance at the concert,” the lawsuit reads, “including but not limited to the failure to provide adequate security personnel to implement crowd control measures, proper barricades, and the failure to provide a sufficient amount of emergency medical support.”

A press release from Chris and Nichole Hilgert, the 14-year-old’s parents, asserts that the couple wants to reform concert presentation, with changes including assigned seating in general admission areas and increases in security and medical personnel on-site. “This pain should never be felt by anyone over a loved one attending a live concert,” Chris said in the statement. “Our sole aim in filing this lawsuit is to prevent this type of tragedy from ever happening again at a live concert. There is no excuse for the poor crowd design, event execution, and lack of response that was exercised at this festival that resulted in the tragic death of our son and nine others along with scores of other people that were innocently injured.”

Another new lawsuit against Travis Scott and Live Nation has emerged in the wake of the tragedy at this year’s Astroworld Festival, this one brought by the family of a man who allegedly died while trying to get his fiancee to safety during the sudden crowd surge during Travis’ closing set on the first night of the festival.

According to The Houston Chronicle, the parents of 27-year-old Mirza Danish Baig tapped Dallas-based law firm, Lyons & Simmons, to sue the festival’s organizers for upwards of $1 million, alleging that Baig was one of the eight people killed at the festival (10 have died in total after another pair of attendees succumbed to injuries sustained during the rush) as he tried to lead his fiance Olivia away from the crushing crowd. However, the two were separated, and he later died from injuries after being trampled by the crowd. Olivia and Baig’s brother Basil were also injured.

According to Simmons, “Each of the responsible parties pushed boundaries of common sense and turned their heads to the dangers, simply for profit. And when it was obvious they had lost complete control of the situation, instead of stopping the show, they made the decision to continue. That disregard resulted in one of the worst mass-casualty events at a concert in history. It’s a total disgrace.”

Scott has been named in over 20 lawsuits — a number that continues to grow — for his role in the crowd surge that caused dozens of people to be crushed, suffocated, or trampled. Ahead of the concert, Travis tweeted encouraging fans to “sneak in,” and previous to it, incidents in which attendees at his other concerts were injured were also attributed to his goading. While Travis has his share of supporters, including Chuck D, who wrote an open letter condemning Travis’ partners in the festival, Live Nation and ScoreMore, with lawsuits ranging all the way up to $750 million have ensured that Astroworld is becoming costlier by the day.