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Texas courts consolidate 387 Astroworld lawsuits
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 2 February 2022
Judges in Texas last week agreed to consolidate 387 lawsuits that have been filed in relation to last year’s Astroworld tragedy. A motion to consolidate and coordinate the mounting stack of Astroworld litigation was first filed in December.
Ten people died and hundreds more were injured when a crowd surge occurred during Travis Scott’s headline set on 5 Nov 2021 at the Houston-based festival he founded. The hundreds of lawsuits that have now been filed in relation to the incident seek to hold Scott and the festival’s promoters – Live Nation and its Scoremore subsidiary – liable for that crowd surge and the resulting deaths and injuries, together seeking billions of dollars in damages.
With so many cases targeting the same defendants – and making very similar allegations about the alleged failings around Astroworld 2021 – it was inevitable that there would be efforts to formally connect the cases, so to reduce the administration associated with them.
That process began in December in relation to 275 lawsuits, with a legal filing requesting that the courts “transfer … all of these lawsuits to a single pretrial judge for consolidated and coordinated pretrial proceedings”. One law firm representing a significant number of Astroworld attendees – Brent Coon & Associates – initially argued that such consolidation wasn’t necessary, but subsequently withdrew its objections to that process going ahead.
Another 177 lawsuits were subsequently added to the list. Then, last week, the Multi-district Litigation Panel of the Texas courts issued a statement noting how the motion seeking consolidation confirmed that all 387 of the listed lawsuits “arise out of incidents leading up to, during and following a live performance by Travis Scott during the Astroworld Festival outside NRG Park on 5 Nov 2021. These incidents are collectively referred to in the agreed motion as ‘the incident'”.
The panel then said: “We conclude that the cases arising out of the incident are related and we find that transfer of those case would result in more efficient pretrial of the related cases. We grant the motion to transfer, and we will appoint the multi-district litigation pretrial judge and designate a multi-district litigation pretrial court by a separate order”.
Legal reps for both plaintiffs and defendants have requested that judge Lauren Reeder oversee this litigation, but it remains to be seen if that’s who the panel appoints.
