The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has sustained a lower court's decision allowing a class-action lawsuit to proceed against Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, over allegations of excessive ticket prices.
The plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit claim that Live Nation has monopolized the ticket sales market, thereby inflating prices and limiting consumer options in the process. The court condemned the company's attempt to impose restrictive arbitration policies, agreements that require customers to resolve disputes privately rather than in court.
The ruling declared those policies to be “unconscionable and unenforceable.” This marks a significant change after previous lawsuits were effectively blocked by these terms, which the court said made it nearly impossible for consumers to hold the ticket giant liable.
Live Nation initially argued that purchasing a ticket impliedly meant consumers were giving up their right to sue and instead required arbitration. However, the appeals panel found the terms too biased, stating in the decision that they were “so dense, convoluted, and internally contradictory as to be almost unintelligible.”
The ruling comes amid other ongoing legal issues for Live Nation, including a separate multimillion-dollar lawsuit following a Ticketmaster data breach that exposed the private information of up to 560 million users, per The ticket business.
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