Live Nation Denied Supreme Court Review of Ruling That Struck Down ‘Unfair’ Ticket Agreements

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t perceive a lawsuit against Live Nation implicit the company’s usage of arbitration agreements for summons buyers, leaving successful spot a ruling past twelvemonth that called the provisions “opaque and unfair.”

The performance elephantine had asked the justices to tackle the lawsuit and overturn that strongly-worded decision, arguing it “creates monolithic uncertainty” for the galore companies that person agelong required consumers to motion specified clauses.

But successful an bid issued Monday, the Supreme Court denied Live Nation’s request; arsenic is typical, it did not contented immoderate mentation for the decision. The justices perceive lone a tiny fraction of the thousands of petitions they person each year.

Filed arsenic a people enactment successful 2022 connected behalf of “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of summons buyers, the suit claims Live Nation and Ticketmaster violated national antitrust laws by abusing their dominance to complaint “extraordinarily high” prices to consumers.

Faced with those allegations, Live Nation argued that fans had waived their close to writer successful tribunal erstwhile they bought their tickets due to the fact that they had signed arbitration agreements — a communal request erstwhile purchasing tickets and different services from galore companies.

In rejecting that statement successful October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Live Nation’s agreements were “unconscionable and unenforceable” since they would marque it “impossible” for fans to reasonably prosecute claims against the company.

The disapproval centered connected Live Nation’s determination to change its presumption of usage to necessitate fans to taxable to “mass arbitration.” Offered by an upstart arbitration steadfast called New Era ADR, the caller process was aimed astatine handling galore cases astatine erstwhile alternatively than individually, which Live Nation believed was necessitated by assertive tactics from lawyers representing immense numbers of concertgoers. But the appeals tribunal said it was intelligibly unfair to the fans.

“Forced to judge presumption that tin beryllium changed without notice, a plaintiff past indispensable arbitrate nether … opaque and unfair rules,” the appeals tribunal wrote astatine the time. “The rules and the presumption are truthful overly harsh oregon one-sided arsenic to unequivocally correspond a systematic effort to enforce arbitration arsenic an inferior forum.”

In asking the Supreme Court to reappraisal that ruling, Live Nation called it a “deeply flawed decision” that exemplified the benignant of “judicial hostility” to backstage arbitration that’s prohibited nether national law.

“The Ninth Circuit’s determination beneath flouts [federal arbitration law], defies this court’s precedents, and threatens to artifact sensible measures for addressing the caller improvement of wide arbitration filings,” the company’s lawyers wrote.

Following the Supreme Court’s rejection of the case, the suit volition present instrumentality to a national court, wherever the concertgoers’ antitrust allegations against Live Nation volition present proceed into litigation. Neither broadside instantly returned requests for remark connected Monday.