Rapino ordered to testify in Astroworld lawsuit

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino has been ordered to give testimony in the lawsuits brought against his company and others by families of those who died at the 2021 Astroworld festival.

Ten people died and hundreds more were injured during the fatal crowd crush at the November 2021 Astroworld event in Houston. In June last year, a Texas grand jury declined to indict rapper and festival founder Travis Scott, nor anyone else associated with the festival.

However, more than 300 lawsuits were filed naming Scott, Live Nation and other companies involved in the event. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs presented the court with evidence of correspondence between Rapino and other people involved in the event in an effort to show that he had significant knowledge about Astroworld.

Live Nation’s attorney, Neal Manne, told the court that only six of those messages dated from prior to the festival, including one where the CEO had asked whether Live Nation was the event’s promoter – proving that Rapino had no involvement in the planning of Astroworld.

“The court finds that Michael Rapino has personal and direct knowledge of relevant information”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs point out that in the immediate aftermath of the crushing tragedy, Rapino had correspondence and conversations with a number of people involved in Astroworld, and as such his testimony is relevant to the litigation.

One claim in the lawsuits is that Live Nation subsidiary Scoremore might not have had sufficient experience to set up the Astroworld festival site, and lawyers appear keen to question Rapino about the corporate structure of Live Nation.

Despite the fact that the lawsuits filed over Astroworld were not able to name Rapino as a defendant in his own right, judge Hawkins agreed with the plaintiffs that his testimony could involve vital information about culpability in the tragedy, and therefore ordered that the CEO sit for a deposition to answer questions under oath.

Ruling that the company’s top executive would have to participate in a deposition, Judge Kristen Hawkins wrote, “The court finds that Michael Rapino has personal and direct knowledge of relevant information. The court finds that Michael Rapino has superior knowledge of discoverable information and that he is the only individual with personal knowledge of the information. The court finds that the information is not available through other sources.”

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