The lawsuit suggests that Madonna should be held liable for breach of contract after she arrived two hours late to a Brooklyn concert.
Two Madonna fans have filed a federal lawsuit against the singer, claiming that she needlessly inconvenienced concertgoers by arriving hours past the scheduled start of a Brooklyn concert.
According to NBC News, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of fans Michael Fellows and Jonathan Hadden, both of whom had purchased tickets to a December 13th performance at Barclays Center in New York City.
The show was expected to begin at 8:30pm. However, Madonna arrived more than two hours late, only taking the stage after 10:45pm. By the time that the concert had concluded, it was nearly 1am, leaving many fans stranded in Brooklyn with “limited public transportation [and] limited ride-sharing options.”
“Defendants failed to provide any notice to the ticketholders that the concerts would start much later than the start time printed on the ticket and as advertised, which resulted in the ticketholders waiting for hours,” the lawsuit alleges.
Attorneys for Fellows and Hadden noted that December 13th was a Wednesday, meaning that many fans had to wake up early for work the next morning—many significantly more tired than they had expected.
“Madonna had demonstrated flippant difficulty in ensuring a timely or complete performance, and Defendants were aware that any statement to a start time for a show constituted, at best, optimistic speculation,” the lawsuit states, alleging that Live Nation—the concert’s organizer—should have been more proactive in scheduling an appropriate starting time.
“Based on the years-long history of Madonna arriving several hours late to prior concerts (and which conduct continued at concerts in other cities after the Concerts at the Barclays Center, including concerts in Washington, D.C., and Boston), [Defendants] knew or should have known that the Concerts would not start at 8:30 p.m., and that Madonna would not take the stage until several hours after the start time, causing Plaintiffs and all Class Members to have to wait several hours,” the complaint claims.
ABC News-7 notes that this is not the first time that Madonna has been sued for arriving late to a concert. In November of 2019, for instance, a Florida man filed his complaint against the singer after a two-hour delay caused him to miss the entire show.
The plaintiff in that case, Nate Hollander, voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit less than a month after it was filed.
On the same 2019 tour, though, another pair of concertgoers—who had also attended a performance in Brooklyn—filed another lawsuit, citing a similar two-hour delay. They eventually reached a settlement in July 2020, after which their claim was voluntarily dismissed.
Sources
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