A U.S. appeals court has upheld a previous lower court ruling that will allow for a proposed class action lawsuit against Live Nation and its ticketing subsidiary, Ticketmaster, to go forward.
Amid the lawsuit’s claims that the company sold tickets at artificially high prices, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Live Nation could not enforce contractual agreements made with consumers that required them to settle their claims outside of court.
According to a report from Billboard, Live Nation claimed fans had waived their right to sue in a federal suit on the grounds they had signed agreements to settle privately.
But the appeals court ruled on Monday that these signed agreements were “unconscionable and unenforceable,” calling them “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible,” and “poorly drafted and riddled with typos.”
“The rules and the terms are so overly harsh or one-sided as to unequivocally represent a systematic effort to impose arbitration as an inferior forum,” the court wrote.
Live Nation has not yet publicly commented on the ruling.
In a statement, Warren Postman, a lawyer for the consumers in the class action suit, welcomed the decision, which Reuters reports now tests the scope of companies’ power to pressure consumers to settle disputes out of court through “mass” arbitrations where hundreds or thousands of claims are handled as individual cases.
Live Nation has defended the arbitration panel responsible for handling the consumer disputes under these agreements, New Era ADR, calling its rules “sensible, fair and similar,” to those at other platforms, according to Reuters.
The ruling comes in the midst of a historic antitrust lawsuit brought against Live Nation by the U.S. Justice Department, accusing the company and Ticketmaster of illegally inflating the price of concert tickets.
The concert promotion company, which reported its “biggest year ever” for attendance, ticket sales, and sponsorship activity in 2023, is reportedly facing another class action lawsuit for failing to adopt necessary security measures to prevent hacks after an April 2024 data breach.
Featured image from Unsplash.com.
