Madonna is facing another class-action lawsuit over delayed concerts on her Celebration tour, this time from a ticket buyer who also claims she forced fans to watch “pornography” during the show.
Like many previous cases, the new lawsuit alleges the Queen of Pop violated false advertising laws by taking the stage more than an hour later than expected, leaving fans to wait in an “uncomfortably hot” arena and return home later than expected.
But the new lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles on Wednesday (May 29) by a fan named Justen Lipeles, also includes a bold new allegation: that Madonna should have warned fans that the show would feature “topless women” who “participated in simulated sexual acts.”
“Forcing consumers to wait hours in hot, uncomfortable arenas and subjecting them to pornography without warning is evidence of Madonna's reckless disrespect for her fans,” the aggrieved fan's lawyers wrote. “The plaintiff felt as if he was watching a pornographic film being filmed.”
Madonna and promoter Live Nation are already facing similar cases in New York and Washington, DC, over claims that the late start of her Celebration concerts violated the law. Both were filed as class action lawsuits, seeking to represent potentially thousands of other fans who also experienced the alleged delays.
The New York case, which focused on the December shows at the Barclay Center, made headlines for arguing that fans “had to get up early to go to work” the next day — a claim Madonna's lawyers have since argued are not true. the type of “known injury” that may form the basis of a claim. The DC case, which targeted tour dates at the District's Capital One Arena, added allegations that the arena was “uncomfortably hot” and that he had lip-synced parts of the show.
In his new lawsuit, Lipeles reiterated all of these allegations about Madonna's March 7 performance at the Kia Forum. He claims he paid more than $500 per ticket for a show that was supposed to start at 8:30 p.m., but Madonna took the stage after 10 p.m., leaving fans waiting in an arena that was overheated due to “Madonna's requirement that venues not turn on the air conditioning.”
“Plaintiff and class members were sweating profusely and became physically ill due to the heat,” his lawyers wrote. “When fans complained about the heat, Madonna unreasonably told them to take off their clothes.”
When the show finally began, Lipeles claims, “it was apparent to plaintiff that Madonna was lip-syncing” during “most of the performance.” And he says he was given no warning that “there would be nudity and pornography on stage during Madonna's concerts.”
In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Madonna of breach of contract with ticket buyers, negligent misrepresentation, false advertising and several other forms of legal wrongdoing under California law.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/madonna-fan-lawsuit-claims-delayed-la-concert-pornographic/