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Travis Scott faces new claims of negligence over stampede at 2019 Rolling Loud festival

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 24 May 2022

A rep for Travis Scott has hit out at allegations made against the rapper in a new legal filing in relation to a stampede that occurred at the 2019 edition of the Rolling Loud festival in Miami. That rep insists that the allegations are a “blatant, cynical attempt to attack Travis” as he faces legal action in relation to the fatal crowd surge at last year’s Astroworld event. Not only that, they add, but the new claims totally misrepresent what happened at Rolling Loud in 2019.

Marchelle Love first sued various companies involved in the Rolling Loud festival back in 2020. She claimed that she suffered severe injuries as a result of a stampede that occurred during Scott’s set at the festival in May 2019, which – she alleged – was the result of negligence on the part of the event’s organisers and the companies involved in planning and delivering its security.

A revised version of that lawsuit filed with the courts earlier this month makes a number of specific allegations against Scott himself.

Those new allegations come as the rapper fights hundreds of lawsuits in relation to the 2021 edition of the Houston festival he founded, Astroworld. Ten people died and hundreds more were injured as a result of a crowd surge that occurred during his headline set at that event.

The Astroworld tragedy put Scott’s live shows very much in the spotlight, with allegations that the rapper had a long history of encouraging his fans to behave in a reckless and dangerous way during his concerts, resulting in fans getting injured and various previous legal woes for Scott himself.

In her sixth amended complaint in relation to Rolling Loud 2019, Love focuses in some detail on Scott’s alleged role in causing the stampede in which she was injured.

“Shortly after Travis Scott’s performance commenced, police officers rushed to the backstage area to request that Travis Scott stop his performance due to the crowd becoming dangerous and uncontrollable”, the new filing claims. “The intervention by local police resulted in Travis Scott being required to stop his performance due to the crowd becoming uncontrollable”.

But, she then alleges, when Scott’s set resumed, he “continued to verbally and physically incite the crowd to engage in a mosh pit and other hazardous activities”, despite “his being ordered by the authorities to cease his continued incitement of the crowd”.

“As a direct and proximate result”, the legal filing continues, “the crowd once again broke into a panic and multiple stampedes broke through the 2019 Rolling Loud Festival during Travis Scott’s performance. Despite the fact that Travis Scott was aware of and could clearly see concertgoers being injured, suffocating, losing consciousness, fighting, and being trampled, he continued his performance while authorities were forced to attempt to render aid to these injured concertgoers”.

“At all times material it was foreseeable that Travis Scott’s refusal to comply with the directives of law enforcement and continued incitement of the crowd would result in foreseeable injury to concertgoers including the plaintiff”, it adds, “and further constituted a breach of his duty to refrain from conduct which would incite the crowd to violence, panic, and to otherwise refrain from behaving in a manner in which would create an unreasonable risk of foreseeable injury”.

The lawsuit also notes that there had been crowd control issues at earlier points during the festival, in particular on the day before Scott’s performance when false rumours to the effect that there was an active shooter on site caused panic among the audience.

In Love’s lawsuit, she argues that this should have made Scott extra cautious about encouraging his fans to act in a reckless way. Although in their response, Scott’s reps counter that it was similar false rumours spreading around the festival site – rather than anything happening on stage during the rapper’s headline set – that caused the unrest in which Love was injured.

Responding to the latest version of Love’s lawsuit, Scott’s rep told TMZ: “This is another blatant, cynical attempt to attack Travis, in this instance for a three year old incident that is deliberately misrepresented”.

“As even the complaint makes clear, this incident was related to a false report of a shooting mid-show, completely unrelated to Travis’s performance. The video shows police were informing Travis that the show was stopped for that reason – because of the false report – and he fully cooperated”.

“This cheap opportunism is based on a blatant lie that’s easy to detect”, the rep added. “And it is particularly telling that this plaintiff’s lawyer didn’t even assert a claim against Travis when he originally filed the complaint on behalf of his client more than two years ago or in four prior versions of that complaint”.