{"id":5769,"date":"2025-05-13T02:09:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T02:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/band-says-lawyer-lied-about-greek-theatre-ties\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T02:09:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T02:09:48","slug":"band-says-lawyer-lied-about-greek-theatre-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/band-says-lawyer-lied-about-greek-theatre-ties\/","title":{"rendered":"Band Says Lawyer Lied About Greek Theatre Ties"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> modern iteration of Grammy-winning band The Kingston Trio is suing a Los Angeles music attorney for fraud, saying he lied about having an \u201cinside track\u201d to book the folk group at the Greek Theatre last summer.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit was filed in California federal court on Friday (May 9) by Trident Concert Productions LLC, a concert promotion company for the lineup that performs as The Kingston Trio following the death of all the legendary folk band\u2019s original members.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new Kingston Trio claims it retained music lawyer David A. Helfant<\/strong> back in 2023 to help the group secure concert dates at Los Angeles\u2019 famed Greek Theatre the following summer. According to the lawsuit, Helfant promised that he had an \u201cinside track\u201d for booking acts at the venue.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHelfant did not have expertise or the inside track or any superior knowledge about how to secure concert dates at the Greek Theater,\u201d writes the group\u2019s current attorney, Konrad L. Trope<\/strong>. \u201cInstead, Helfant created an overinflated bill, along with convincing Trident that it needed to retain a former Greek Theatergeneral manager who could provide inside access.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe group claims Helfant fraudulently convinced them to pay a hefty $650 per hour billing rate, plus $10,000 to a consultant who supposedly could help \u201cgrease the wheels\u201d at the Greek Theatre.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn reality, says The Kingston Trio, neither Helfant nor his consultant had any \u201cinside track.\u201d But that didn\u2019t even matter; according to the group, the Greek Theatre actually has a transparent booking protocol that allows anybody to bid for dates online. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe group was eventually able to secure two August 2024 dates at the Greek Theater using this public bidding system. But the group claims Helfant\u2019s misdeeds delayed the booking process significantly, giving them only seven months to promote the shows.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHelfant did not help, but rather hindered plaintiff\u2019s efforts,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo make matters worse, the group claims Helfant also spent precious hours pitching his other clients to work as cinematographers on a concert documentary that was to be filmed during the shows, but the pitches lacked proper disclosures about the regulations around private film investors, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Kingston Trio is suing Helfant for breach of contract and fraud and asking for at least $250,000 in damages.<\/p>\n

\n\tReached for comment on Monday (May 12), Helfant tells Billboard<\/em> that the allegations in the lawsuit are \u201care completely without merit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI am confident that when the facts come to light in this action, I will prevail,\u201d says Helfant. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Kingston Trio, established by Bob Shane, Dave Guard and Nick Reynolds in San Francisco in the 1950s, charted 17 folk songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and won two Grammy Awards for its No. 1 hit, \u201cTom Dooley.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll three original members of The Kingston Trio have died, with Shane the last to pass away in 2020. The group continues to perform under a new lineup that\u2019s currently made up of Mike Marvin, Tim Gorelangton and Buddy Woodward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A modern iteration of Grammy-winning band The Kingston Trio is suing a Los Angeles music attorney for fraud, saying he lied about having an \u201cinside track\u201d to book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1105,5908,107,5907,5909,4724],"class_list":["post-5769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-band","tag-greek","tag-lawyer","tag-lied","tag-theatre","tag-ties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769","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=5769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}