By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a bid by Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster to move a proposed consumer class action lawsuit over rigged ticket prices out of federal court and into private arbitration.
The justices turned away Live Nation’s appeal of a lower court’s decision to allow the litigation to move forward in federal court because the arbitration rules at issue were overtly beneficial to companies and unfair to consumers.
Beverly Hills, California-based Live Nation was accused by ticket purchasers in the 2022 lawsuit filed in Los Angeles of monopolizing ticketing services, allowing the company to charge artificially high prices in violation of antitrust law. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages.
Live Nation in its challenge to the lawsuit tried to push the consumers into arbitration at New Era ADR, which launched in 2021 and offered a new “mass” arbitration procedure. Under this procedure, a neutral arbitrator who presides over the matter could group together cases and make a ruling that would apply to them and other subsequent disputes.
Companies often promote arbitration as a more efficient way for individual consumers to air their disputes outside of court. Arbitration provisions can limit or bar consumers from forming class actions in court that might put greater pressure on a company to settle claims. Class actions, on the other hand, can expose companies to tens of millions of dollars, if not billions, in liability.
Mass arbitration is relatively new, and Live Nation and other companies have said that lawyers for plaintiffs increasingly are filing thousands of identical arbitration claims, overwhelming providers.
A federal judge in 2023 declined Live Nation’s request to move the claims out of court and into private arbitration.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld that decision. The 9th Circuit said New Era’s mass arbitration rules were “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible.” New Era is not a defendant in the litigation.
Live Nation in its petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the matter said the 9th Circuit decision “threatens arbitration in general and hamstrings good-faith efforts to combat the destructive effects of mass arbitration filings.”
New Era in a Supreme Court filing said its rules “have remained centered on keeping mass arbitration workable, accessible, fast, and merits-based for all parties involved.”
The consumers in their Supreme Court filing denied that the lower courts showed any hostility to federal arbitration.
Live Nation faces other antitrust lawsuits over its ticketing practices, including an antitrust action filed in federal court in Manhattan by the U.S. Justice Department and a group of states.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
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