The first civil trial for Travis Scott, Live Nation and others for their role in the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival – which starts next week – has now been delayed.
After more than two years of litigation over a crowd crash that left 10 dead and hundreds injured, a trial was finally set to begin on Monday (May 6) – a key first test for hundreds of other cases filed by victims and families who they claim the festival organizers were legally negligent.
But those proceedings have now been delayed indefinitely, thanks to an unresolved battle over whether Apple Inc., which filmed Scott's fatal performance, should be involved in the case.
In a ruling Thursday, a Texas appeals court refused to let the case go forward until it could rule on the ongoing controversy over Apple's involvement. He gave Apple until May 10 to file documents in the case — meaning the May 6 start date must be pushed back at least until then, and likely longer.
In a hearing the same day reported by The Associated Press, the judge overseeing the Astroworld case confirmed the delay to the scheduled: “Unless I hear otherwise, the trial is adjourned,” Judge Kristen Hawkins said at the hearing.
Hundreds of people have sued over the November 5, 2021 incident at Astroworld, in which a crowd crush during Scott's headlining set left 10 fans dead from compression suffocation and hundreds more injured. Collectively seeking billions in potential damages, the victims allege that Scott (real name Jacques Bermon Webster II), Live Nation and many others were legally negligent in the way they planned and ran the festival.
After years of discovery and depositions, the first trial in the massive lawsuit — a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Madison Dubiski, a 23-year-old who died on Astroworld — was set to begin May 6.
Apple, which offered an exclusive live stream of Scott's performance that night, was named as a defendant in several of those lawsuits, including the one filed by the Dubiskis. The victims claim that Apple directly contributed to the disaster by placing its equipment: “Apple's role in the tragedy is clear: it reduced the available space of the crowd, when the available space was a matter of life or limb.”
The tech giant has categorically denied these claims. In a move last month to have the lawsuit dismissed, Apple argued that simply live streaming the event did not make the company responsible for the disaster: “Apple is not the reason the plaintiffs lost their loved one.” .
Instead, the company said it was filming the deadly event as a member of the media, meaning it was insulated from such lawsuits by the First Amendment.
“Allowing plaintiffs to sue Apple under tort law for exercising their free speech rights would have a significant chilling effect,” the company wrote last month in a motion. “Recognizing such a legal duty in this case would be completely unprecedented and would impose significant burdens on broadcasters and live broadcasters who are frequent attendees of events.”
In a ruling last month, Judge Hawkins denied that motion, leaving Apple to face the upcoming trial alongside Scott, Live Nation and the other defendants. So the tech giant filed an immediate appeal in a state appeals court seeking to overturn that decision — a move that, under Texas state law, automatically stays any future litigation.
“Apple acknowledges that the trial date is imminent and that both the court and all parties have spent considerable time and effort preparing the case for trial,” Apple's lawyers said Tuesday. “These free speech and free press issues warrant judicial resolution before Apple faces a lawsuit.”
As it became clear that Apple's appeal could delay the trial, lawyers for Dubiski's family slammed the move, calling it “a sneaky plan to derail the process” with a “frivolous” appeal. In a motion Wednesday seeking to dismiss the appeal and stay the trial date, they argued that Apple is no more protected by the First Amendment than a Houston television station “whose news truck negligently crashed into a pedestrian while covering a story”.
“The Dubiski family … patiently waited for their day in court, only to see Apple shamelessly try to manipulate the system,” lawyers for the victim's family wrote. “The judicial process should not work this way. This court should immediately dismiss this appeal.”
But in an order late Thursday, the appeals court refused to unfreeze the case ahead of the scheduled trial date: “Appellants' request to lift any applicable stay of proceedings is denied.” Instead, it ordered Apple to respond by May 10 to the plaintiffs' request to dismiss the case.
