The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s decision allowing a class action lawsuit to proceed against Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, over accusations of excessive ticket pricing.
The plaintiffs in the class action suit claim that Live Nation has monopolized the ticketing market, thereby inflating prices and limiting consumers’ choices in the process. The court condemned the company’s attempt to enforce restrictive arbitration policies, agreements that force customers to settle disputes privately rather than in court.
The ruling declared those policies “unconscionable and unenforceable.” The development marks a significant shift after previous lawsuits were effectively blocked by these terms, which the court found made it nearly impossible for consumers to hold the ticketing giant accountable.
Live Nation initially argued that purchasing a ticket implicitly meant consumers waived their right to sue and instead required arbitration. However, the appeals panel has found the terms to be overly biased, stating in the decision that they were “so dense, convoluted, and internally contradictory as to be nearly unintelligible.”
The ruling comes amid other ongoing legal troubles 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 TheTicketingBusiness.
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