Compounding the legal problems it faces, Live Nation has to pay a New York man $101 million because of a fall at a concert that left him with a fractured skull.
A jury in a Manhattan Supreme court decided to award the payment to Mark Perez. In June of 2013, Perez fell ten feet from the Best Buy Booth in the Jones Beach Marine Theatre, which is located in Wantagh on Long Island. He has since undergone four separate brain surgeries. In addition to a deformed head, he also has memory loss and needs full-time care.
His lawsuit further alleged that the accident directly led to him losing his longtime girlfriend.
Perez fell after a forklift crashed into the booth while he was sitting inside it. At the time, doctors gave him only a 10% chance of surviving.
That same year, Perez filed the suit against Live Nation, which had been promoting the event.
He sought damages for pain and suffering — both in the past and in the future — as well as for medical expenses and lost earnings.
In response to the suit, Live Nation allegedly offered Perez a $31 million settlement. But his lawyer Benedict Morelli says that, because the offer was made only one week prior to the trial, Perez decided to decline it.
This particular trial was just to determine what damages were to be paid to Perez. In 2016, a judge determined that Live Nation was liable for the man’s injuries.
Morelli says of the latest trial, “There was a lot to it and the defendant’s experts and lawyers never really took responsibility. They tried to diminish his cognitive deficiencies, almost blaming him, to get a discount.”
Perez himself issued a statement, in which he paid homage to the “dedicated jury that did justice to me and my family.”
So far, neither Live Nation nor its lawyers have commented on the verdict.