Madonna is facing another class action lawsuit over delayed concerts on her Celebration Tour, this time from a ticket buyer who also claims she forced fans to watch “pornography” during the show.
Like several previous cases, the new lawsuit claims that the Queen of Pop violated false advertising laws by taking the stage more than an hour later than expected, leaving fans to wait in an “uncomfortably hot” arena and get home later than expected.
But the new case, filed in Los Angeles on Wednesday (May 29) by a fan named Justen Lipeles, also includes a bold new accusation: that Madonna should have warned fans that the show would include “topless women” who were “engaging in simulated sexual acts.”
“Forcing consumers to wait hours in hot, uncomfortable arenas and subjecting them to pornography without warning is demonstrative of Madonna’s flippant disrespect for her fans,” lawyers for the aggrieved fan wrote. “Plaintiff felt like he was watching a pornographic film being made.”
Madonna and promotor Live Nation are already facing similar cases in New York and Washington, D.C., over claims that late starts to her Celebration concerts broke the law. Both were filed as class actions, seeking to represent potentially thousands of other fans who also faced the alleged delays.
The New York case, focused on December shows at the Barclay Center, made headlines because it claimed the fans “had to get up early to go to work” the next day — a claim Madonna’s lawyers have since argued is not the kind of “cognizable injury” that can form the basis for a lawsuit. The D.C. case, targeting tour dates at the District’s Capital One Arena, added claims that the arena was “uncomfortably hot” and that she had lip-synched portions of the show.
In his new lawsuit, Lipeles echoed all of those claims about Madonna’s March 7 performance at the Kia Forum. He claims he paid more than $500 per ticket for a show that was supposed to start at 8:30 p.m. but that Madonna didn’t take the stage until after 10 p.m., leaving fans to wait in an arena that was overheated due to “Madonna’s requirement that venues not turn on air conditioning.”
“Plaintiff and members of the class were profusely sweating and became physically ill as a result of the heat,” his lawyers write. “When fans complained about the heat, Madonna unreasonably told them to take their clothes off.”
When the show finally did start, Lipeles claims, “it was apparent to plaintiff that Madonna was lip synching” during “most of the performance.” And he says he was given no warning that “there would be nudity and pornography on stage during Madonna’s concerts.”
In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Madonna of breaching her contract with ticket buyers, negligent misrepresentation, false advertising and several other forms of legal wrongdoing under California law.
