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Artist Liability for Audience Injuries

By Stan Soocher

In today's concert scene, high-energy music is often accompanied by audience members who engage in such physical, and sometimes dangerous, activities as crowd surfing, moshing and stage diving. What happens when a member of the audience is injured as a result of such conduct by another concertgoer?

The most recent court ruling on this issue involved the rock group Creed. Christa Harlow attended a 1998 show by Creed at the Webster Theatre in Hartford, CT. Harlow sustained face and head injuries when another concertgoer fell on her from the stage. She then filed a negligence suit in the Superior Court of Connecticut, Judicial District of New Haven, against the band members, the theater and others involved in producing the concert. The complaint alleged that the defendants had “permitted a highly dangerous and violent activity to persist, knew or should have known based on the genre of music and the typical behavior of its audiences that there was a strong likelihood that these dangerous activities would occur at the subject concert and place patrons, such as the plaintiff, at risk of injury.”

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