The first three Astroworld injury lawsuits are due to finally go to trial in the US courts this week and the festival-goers involved are concerned that Travis Scott could scupper things - or at least cause more delay - via ‘motion to compel’ he recently filed. Scott’s legal team are trying to get information about settlements that have been reached with some of the other defendants involved in the wide-ranging litigation that followed the 2021 Astroworld tragedy.
Angel Dominguez, Elizabeth Martinez and Henry Nguyen - who were all injured in the crowd surge that occurred during Scott’s headline set at the Houston festival he founded - are “anxious for their day in court”, a new legal filing states. Scott’s recent move is nothing more than “a last-minute attempt to delay the trial”, adds the filing. His arguments, add lawyers for the three, are simply a “supposed ‘emergency’ of its own creation” that is based on “an incorrect argument”.
Hundreds of lawsuits were filed in the wake of the Astroworld crowd surge, naming Scott, promoter Live Nation and various other companies as defendants.
The ten cases involving the families of those who died have all been settled, but many lawsuits filed by those injured are continuing to move through the legal system. The lawsuits filed by Dominguez, Martinez and Nguyen will go to trial as ‘bellwether cases’ and the outcome of these lawsuits will inform all the other cases that are pending.
There were originally six of these bellwether cases, but now only three of them are going to trial. Some of the festival-goers involved in those cases have reached settlements with some of the other defendants, including Apple, which got pulled into the Astroworld litigation because it was livestreaming Scott’s set at the time of the crowd surge.
In last week’s filing, Scott’s lawyers implied that they only found out about those settlements at the last minute and insisted that they need to know details about what was agreed in the settlements in order to properly plan for the upcoming trial. They also claimed that procedural rules in Texas oblige the other parties to provide that information.
However, when they filed a motion asking the judge overseeing the case, Kristen Hawkins, to force disclosure of the settlements that had been reached, she declined to rule on that motion. So Scott’s team have turned to the appeals court to get a decision - something that could cause a delay to the proceedings.
In response, legal reps for Dominguez, Martinez and Nguyen present three arguments. Most importantly of all, they say, the settlements that have been reached are currently “preliminary global agreements”, with the specific commitments to injured individuals yet to be finalised. As a result, they argue, there is no obligation under Texas law for the terms of the settlement deals to be disclosed at this time.
Not only that, but the implication that Scott’s team found out about the settlements late in the day, creating an ‘emergency’ that needs to be settled before the bellwether trials begin, simply isn’t true, they argue.
“The preliminary settlement agreements at issue were discussed at a status conference on 9 Sep”, they say, and that discussion included both the “trial court and defence liaison counsel”, with Scott’s lawyer being directly informed about the agreements on 12 Sep.
Despite that, Scott’s legal team “waited for a month” before it presented a “novel argument” about the settlements to the court, and it was that delay that created a “contrived emergency”. Team Scott “should not be rewarded for creating its own contrived ‘emergency’”, they add.
Finally, the festival-goers also criticise the implication that Judge Hawkins hasn’t properly dealt with Scott’s motion, resulting in her declining to rule on it.
They say Scott’s lawyer was asked by the trial court to “articulate the basis for his argument, not supported by any existing Texas precedent” that disclosure was necessary for a “preliminary global agreement” and he “was unable to do so to the court’s satisfaction”.
To that end, the injured festival goers in the three remaining bellwether cases - Dominguez, Martinez and Nguyen - want the appeals court to reject Scott’s motion to force disclosure of information about the settlements, so that the trials can proceed without further delay.