{"id":3091,"date":"2024-10-24T20:56:06","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T20:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/live-nation-ceo-must-face-deposition-over-astroworld-music-festival\/"},"modified":"2024-10-24T20:56:06","modified_gmt":"2024-10-24T20:56:06","slug":"live-nation-ceo-must-face-deposition-over-astroworld-music-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/live-nation-ceo-must-face-deposition-over-astroworld-music-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Nation CEO Must Face Deposition Over Astroworld Music Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tLive Nation CEO Michael Rapino<\/strong> must be deposed in the ongoing litigation over the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival, the Texas Supreme Court says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a ruling last week, the high court denied Live Nation\u2019s petition seeking to stop the deposition, rejecting its arguments that victims were simply seeking to depose the executive in order to \u201charass Live Nation and to coerce settlements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oct. 15 ruling, which left in place a trial judge\u2019s decision this summer forcing Rapino to testify, came nearly three years after the 2021 incident, in which a crowd crush during Travis Scott\u2019s headlining set left 10 dead and hundreds injured.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe disaster spawned hundreds of lawsuits against Live Nation, Scott and others, collectively seeking billions of dollars in damages. Many of those cases have since settled on private terms, but some victims are still moving toward a jury trial. A so-called bellwether trial had been scheduled to start this week but was pushed back to February after more settlements were reached.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn seeking to block Rapino\u2019s deposition, Live Nation\u2019s attorneys argued that he was the kind of top-level \u201capex\u201d executive who can\u2019t typically be dragged into court cases. They said he was far removed from actual decision-making and was \u201cnot involved in the festival\u201d, meaning he didn\u2019t have any unique information for the lawsuit that couldn\u2019t be gleaned from other sources.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMr. Rapino\u2019s only connection to the festival was as Live Nation\u2019s ultimate executive,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers wrote. \u201cAny knowledge he may possess was obtained from others who have knowledge superior to his own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut attorneys for victims argued that Rapino had played a more direct role in the operations of Astroworld than Live Nation was letting on. Among other evidence, they cited an email Rapino sent on the night of the disaster, instructing Live Nation\u2019s festival director to wait for more information about the death toll before canceling the rest of the festival. \u201cIf 5 died we would cancel,\u201d he wrote in the message.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRemarkably, Live Nation claims that Rapino was not the decisionmaker on whether to cancel the Festival,\u201d the lawyers for the victims wrote. \u201cThis email proves otherwise, and plaintiffs want an opportunity to examine Rapino about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing last week\u2019s ruling, it\u2019s unclear when Rapino\u2019s deposition will take place. A spokesperson for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment on the court\u2019s order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino must be deposed in the ongoing litigation over the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival, the Texas Supreme Court says. In a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[340,594,1075,422,2787,344,593,1206],"class_list":["post-3091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-astroworld","tag-ceo","tag-deposition","tag-face","tag-festival","tag-live","tag-music","tag-nation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}