Travis Scott reportedly couldn’t share his phone records with lawyers acting in the ‘Astroworld’ case after it was claimed the phone had fallen into the sea.
During a performance during Scott and Live Nation’s Astroworld festival on November 5 2021, thousands were left injured when a crowd surged towards the front of the stage during Scott’s headline performance.
10 people were killed by compressive asphyxiation during the show — with victims aged between age nine and 27.
At the time, Scott said that the tragedy had left him “devastated” but didn’t realise quite how severe the events were until he left the stage. Following the incident, thousands of plaintiffs came forward, asking for what tallied to be billions of dollars in potential damages.
As per Rolling Stone, those coming forward with claims have cited several allegations including poor planning from festival organisers and a lack of security as contributing to the crowd rush. Live Nation and Scott have previously denied the claims.
Scott’s lawyer Kent Schaffer said in June that the decision to not indict Scott had come as “a great relief” to his client (via BBC).
Schaffer confirmed in a statement that the jury had met, but chose not to indict his client. He also denied any wrongdoing from the rapper. “He never encouraged people to do anything that resulted in other people being hurt,” he said. “Travis is not responsible. Bringing criminal charges against him will not ease [the victim’s] pain.”
Earlier this week, Scott faced further questions over the festival in Houston – something his lawyer deemed as “typical legal procedure.”
It’s now been claimed that lawyers acting for the plaintiffs were forced to file emergency motions to obtain electronic records for Scott and his employees via his entity Global Inc and Cactus Jack. The lawyers alleged that they had failed to provide the necessary documents.
In documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Scott’s legal team responded by claiming that his phone fell off a boat while the rapper was on holiday in Mexico and subsequently couldn’t be retrieved.
Rolling Stone said they’d seen a motion by the plaintiff’s lawyers that read: “Travis Scott and his team stand apart as having not produced a single text, WeChat communication, video, or photo from their phones – not because they don’t exist – but because his attorneys chose not to image or search their phones the order to do so by the court.”
The attorneys had reportedly claimed earlier in the case that Scott and XX Global Inc had previously refused to impart information from their phones on different grounds, saying the request was “seeking confidential and/or sensitive information” and that the disclosure of said documents was “unreasonably cumulative or duplicative of other of the requests.”
Scott’s attorney Steve Brody claimed the rapper’s mobile device “fell off a boat in January of 2022 and landed somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and is not able to be retrieved.” He added that he didn’t back up his phone over “significant hacking concerns.”
In the transcript obtained by Rolling Stone, Judge Kristen Hawkins questioned this, saying: “There does not seem to have been any action, from what I am hearing right now, taken on the part of Mr Scott’s legal team to either, A, secure and download anything from his phone immediately following an event in which 10 people died, or, B, trying to recover text messages from alternate sources when Mr Scott would have the ability to go and get that information, possibly from the carrier, or from other sources.”
Brody reportedly explained they had looked into recovering messages via Apple and Scott’s provider, but had been unable to do so.
NME has reached out to representatives of Scott for comment.
Elsewhere, Scott teamed up with Drake to perform their latest collaboration ‘Meltdown’ live for the first time ever in Vancouver, Canada.
While performing at the Rodgers Arena in Vancouver on August 29 as part of his ongoing ‘It’s All A Blur’ tour, Drake brought out Travis Scott as a special guest performer. While the tour was meant to feature 21 Savage along with Drake, 21 Savage was not able to perform for any Canadian dates due to ongoing immigration issues.
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