Live Nation Sued By Fans Injured During Stampede at Lovers & Friends Festival In Las Vegas

Live Nation is facing a lawsuit from three people who say they were injured at last year’s Lovers & Friends Music Festival in Las Vegas, during a stampede triggered by false reports of gunfire.

In a complaint filed last week in Los Angeles, plaintiffs Carla Thomas, James Thomas and Aaliyah Aguilar claimed that Live Nation had “failed to take basic, reasonable steps” to protect them from such an incident.

“Plaintiffs screamed for help from the event organizers and security, but none came,” attorneys for the trio wrote in the April 4 lawsuit. “Plaintiffs screamed for emergency medical care for their injuries, but none came.”

The two-day Lovers & Friends festival, held over a weekend last May, featured several R&B and rap artists, including Usher, Ludacris and Ne-Yo. But performances were briefly halted that Saturday when a large group of panicked attendees fled the venue over rumors of gun shots. Police later said that there was no evidence that a shooting took place.

Stampedes amid false reports of gunfire have cropped up several times in recent years. Fans suffered injuries during gunfire panics at a Future concert in Brooklyn in 2017, at Lil Wayne and Cardi B concerts in 2018, and at the 2019 Rolling Loud festival in Miami. Just last month, three fans were killed during a stampede at a GloRilla concert in western New York reportedly sparked by fears of a shooter.

In their lawsuit, Thomas, Thomas and Aguilar claimed that the rush at Lovers & Friends was triggered by a “loud noise,” causing a “sea of people” to surge toward them. They said they were “pushed, smashed, dragged, kicked, stepped on, trampled and crushed to the ground” during the incident, causing them “serious injuries” and emotional distress.

And their lawyers say that Live Nation is to blame – specifically, that the company was negligent in how it planned and operated the festival.

“Defendants failed to employ adequate, properly trained, monitored, and supervised reasonable security, safety and medical provision measures,” they wrote. “Defendants failed to provide a safe venue, one that provided adequate signs and warnings that would have guided the crowd into a particular emergency exit route in the event of an alarm or emergency.”

Such lawsuits are common after incidents in which fans are injured at concerts, but they’re not easy to win. Lawyers for the accusers will need to show that the incident was something Live Nation could have seen coming, and that it failed to take specific steps that would have prevented the injuries suffered by their clients.

A rep for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.