Foo Fighters Sue Insurer

The Foo Fighters sued its insurers Monday for not paying a single cent when the band had to cancel four European shows in the aftermath of last year’s Paris terror attacks. The band was scheduled to perform shows in four European cities – including Paris and Lyon, France – from Nov. 14 through Nov. 19 last year. These were the last four scheduled concerts of the band’s nearly 100-date Sonic Highways Tour.
On Nov. 13, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris left 130 people dead and hundreds more wounded. Eighty-nine people were killed while attending an American rock band concert.

The Foo Fighters were scheduled to perform in Turin, Italy, less than 24 hours after the attacks. On the day of the performance, the band learned that their tour website had been hacked to display an image depicting the Islamic State flag, an automatic weapon, a terrorist and a threat of violence, according to a lawsuit the band filed Monday against Lloyd’s of London.

The threat, along with the aftermath of the previous day’s attack, led the band to cancel their last four shows, the lawsuit states.

“This difficult decision was made out of concern not only for the safety of the band, their fans and crew, but also due to the potential impossibility of traveling in the wake of the attacks across the closed borders of France, or within Europe generally – let alone with a massive convoy of approximately 120 people on 10 buses, and 14 semi trucks filled with sound, lighting, staging equipment and more,” the band says.

The Foo Fighters notified its Lloyd’s of London insurers that its final four shows were being canceled, expecting that their terrorism policy would provide them coverage, according to the complaint.

Although the insurers “have engaged in a seemingly never-ending series of requests for increasingly irrelevant information, particularly as to the necessity of cancelling the Turin and Barcelona performances, they have not provided Foo Fighters with any indication that they dispute coverage for the cancelation of the Paris, France and Lyon, France performances,” the lawsuit alleges.

However, seven months later, the insurers still have not paid “a single penny” of the Foo Fighter’s terrorism coverage claim, the band says.

The Foo Fighters are also suing their insurers for allegedly failing to pay for seven performances that were canceled in June 2015 after frontman Dave Grohl fell off the stage during a show in Sweden and injured his right leg.

Although Grohl came back on stage and finished that show in a seated position, with his injured leg and ankle elevated and braced, his subsequent surgery and recovery necessitated the cancelation of the tour’s next seven scheduled performances, the lawsuit says.

The band says that their insurers agreed to the cancelation of the remaining European concerts, but Grohl decided he could perform while seated and with the aid of crutches at the rest of the scheduled performances, according to the complaint.

The insurers allegedly expressed their gratitude to the band on several occasions. “Such expressions reflect, in part, that Foo Fighters’ decision to continue playing saved the London market insurers tens of millions of dollars in claim payments that would have been owing had Foo Fighters simply canceled the balance of the tour, which would have been easily justifiable under the circumstances.”

Source: Entertainment Law Digest
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