The number of lawsuits filed over last month’s Astroworld tragedies have risen drastically this week, with a single Houston-based attorney filing a total of 1,547 new cases.
The move came just hours after attorneys on both sides agreed to consolidate the 275 cases that were active as of last Sunday (December 5) into one expansive case. The new filings were announced on Monday (December 6), and were made by the titular founder of Brent Coon & Associates. With them, the number of plaintiffs seeking restitution for the incidents that occurred at Astroworld has grown to nearly 2,800.
Coon filed his cases with the Harris County District Court, and has requested for all of them to be consolidated into a single courtroom; per his firm’s announcement, a hearing is scheduled for next Monday (December 13). Coon seeks a total of $10billion to resolve all 1,547 cases, although it isn’t named in his announcement who exactly is being sued.
Previous lawsuits filed over this year’s Astroworld incidents named Travis Scott, Live Nation, Drake, NRG Energy, the Harris County Sports Authority, and Scott’s companies Jack Enterprises and Cactus Jack.
“In addition to litigating high profile mass tragedies all over the county the last 35 years,” Coon said in a statement, “I also have run a concert promotion company for over 20 years and am very familiar with how you are supposed to plan these events. What happened at Astroworld was an unconscionable tragedy and it is important that justice is served for all those impacted.”
Coon’s LinkedIn profile lists him as the CEO of Coondog Productions & Real Estate, described as “a production company with a national presence primarily with corporate and public performances, promotions and bookings in the music sector”.
Alongside restitution for his clients, Coon is reportedly “demanding legislative action to include crowd control planning specialists to certify events, mandated training programs for event preparation and criminal liability for any wrongdoing”.
“We will roll over every rock in this matter,” Coon continued in his statement. “Everyone associated with these types of events has the power to halt conduct that is resulting in injury to attendees.”
Coon claimed “some defendants have already gone public misstating and downplaying their responsibilities that attach to events such as this”, which he called “terribly disappointing”. He further alleged in his statement that “not a single company or individual involved in this incident EVER made an effort” to prevent the fatal crowd surge from occurring at Astroworld.
“Trying to publicly dodge culpability is irresponsible and inconsistent with what really goes on behind the scenes in these events,” Coon said.
Earlier this week, Scott filed requests to be dismissed from the lawsuits levelled against him. It was reported that a representative for Scott said the rapper “is not legally liable” for the tragedy; Scott has denied all the allegations set against him, and his representative said he will likely file more dismissal requests.
It came as Live Nation – and its subsidiary ScoreMore, Astroworld’s promoters – denied all the allegations against them in documents filed on Monday. The Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation, which owns venue NRG Park where Astroworld was held, however, did not request for dismissal.
Live Nation said in a previous statement that it will “continue to support and assist local authorities in their ongoing investigation” and “address all legal matters at the appropriate time”. Live Nation and other promoter ScoreMore have also revealed plans to develop a health fund to cover the festival’s attendees’ medical fees and provide mental health counselling resources.
Meanwhile, families of half the victims who died during Scott’s headline set at Astroworld have rejected the rapper’s offer to pay for funeral expenses. In the days following the tragic crowd surge on November 5, which left 10 people dead and hundreds more injured, Scott offered to cover the cost of all victims’ funerals. Lawyers for the victims’ families have called the offer “bullshit”, “demeaning” and “really inappropriate”.
The CEO of ParaDocs, the medical company hired by Astroworld, has also spoken out on the crowd surge tragedy, saying that his staff faced an “impossible feat” of treating 11 people with cardiac arrests at the same time. He also said that he’ll have “nightmares about for the rest of [his] life.”
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