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Change In ADR Provider at Issue In Event-Ticketing Fees Litigation
A new antitrust complaint over ticketing fees has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and Ticketmaster. Heckman v. Live Nation Entertainment Inc., 2:22-cv-00047 (Complaint available at //bit.ly/3FLZjlC). The plaintiffs' tandem had been pursuing antitrust claims against the world's largest concert promoter and the ticket-selling giant in a lawsuit originally filed in 2020 on behalf of ticket-buyers who claim they paid artificially inflated fees on Ticketmaster's online platforms for concerts at major venues. Central Federal District Judge George H. Wu, dismissing that first suit, granted a request from Ticketmaster's lawyers at Latham & Watkins to route the ticket-buyers' claims to arbitration last September. Oberstein v. Live Nation Entertainment Inc., 2:20-cv-03888. The judge found Ticketmaster adequately put consumers on notice that all disputes would be routed to arbitration in its terms of use.
But in the Heckman complaint, the plaintiffs' lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and the Chicago-based Keller Lenkner noted that while the companies' motion to compel arbitration was pending last summer, Ticketmaster changed its ticket-purchase terms of use. As of July 2, rather than routing arbitrations to established alternative-dispute-resolution (ADR) provider JAMS, Ticketmaster designated New Era ADR, an online startup based in Chicago, as the forum for disputes with consumers. The plaintiffs in the newly filed suit put forth the same antitrust claims as in the Oberstein suit, while challenging the consumer arbitration agreement by claiming New Era ADR's protocols for mass arbitrations, laid out in the rules and procedures posted to its website, require "a novel and one-sided process that is tailored to disadvantage consumers."
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