Madonna knows fans don’t expect her to start her show on time. Now her legal team is trying to prove it.
Back in January, two attendees of a Madonna concert in Brooklyn filed a lawsuit against the 65-year-old pop star, claiming false advertisement and breach of contract due to her tardiness. Michael Fellows and Jonathan Hadden, who filed against Live Nation and Barclays Center, are now faced with a dismissal request from Madonna’s lawyers.
“Plaintiffs speculate that ticketholders who left the venue after 1 a.m. might have had trouble getting a ride home or might have needed to wake up early the next day for work,” stated Madonna’s request, obtained Wednesday by Fox News Digital. “That is not a cognizable injury.”
The concert took place Dec. 13 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn — kicking off the U.S. leg of Madonna’s Celebration Tour.
“The shows opened in North America at Barclays in Brooklyn as planned, with the exception of a technical issue December 13th during sound check. This caused a delay that was well documented in press reports at the time,” Madonna’s management team and Live Nation said in a previous statement to The Times.
That night, the show did not begin until almost 11 p.m. — several hours after the doors opened and two hours after the expected start time. Fans immediately took their outrage to social media.
The class-action lawsuit alleges that there was no notice to ticketholders that the show’s start time would be later than the time shown on the ticket. Madonna’s team states in the new filing that “nowhere” on the ticket did it say the concert would begin at 8:30 p.m.
The motion reads, “no reasonable concertgoer — and certainly no Madonna fan — would expect the headline act at a major arena concert to take the stage at the ticketed event time.”
The seven-time Grammy winner’s Celebration Tour is the 12th tour in her career. Given Madonnna’s experience as a performer, her dismissal notice repeatedly brings up what a reasonable concertgoer would expect from a concert.
“Rather, a reasonable concertgoer would understand that the venue’s doors will open at or before the ticketed time, one or more opening acts may perform while attendees arrive and make their way to their seats and before the headline act takes the stage, and the headline act will take the stage later in the evening,” the court filing reads.
The Celebration Tour was originally postponed due to the singer’s sudden hospitalization with a severe bacterial infection last year. But after the challenges she has faced, the Material Girl is currently finishing up the U.S. leg of the tour and will conclude the tour April 26 in Mexico.
