For the second time in nine months, Live Nation has sued one of its insurance companies for denying coverage to the live entertainment and ticketing giant in class action lawsuits against it.
In the most recent lawsuit, Live Nation is suing underwriters at Lloyd’s London, and one of its subsidiaries Beazley Furlonge Inc., for $10 million for allegedly denying coverage to the company against several class actions Live Nation fought as part of the debacle over its Ticketmaster division redirecting customers to the secondary ticket Web site TicketsNow it also owns. The $10 million lawsuit was filed last month in Los Angeles Superior Court in California.
Live Nation has an insurance policy with Beazley Furlonge that it claims covers it against certain damages, such as its professional or technology services and content, according to Westlaw Journals, which first reported on the lawsuit.
The company believes that the policy should cover the related TicketsNow lawsuits, in part because they involved the company’s Web sites.
Roughly a dozen separate but similar lawsuits concerning the redirecting of customers were filed in the U.S. and Canada over the last couple of years, and those suits were eventually consolidated into one class action. Most of the trouble occurred in 2009 after Bruce Springsteen fans were redirected from Ticketmaster.com to TicketsNow.com where tickets are resold at a premium above face value. Fans angrily claimed that they did not realize they were being pushed to the secondary Web site, which prompted Ticketmaster to apologize for the practice and settle complaints with the former attorney general of New Jersey and the Federal Trade Commission.
Ticketmaster claims that by denying it coverage, Lloyd’s breached the policy in several ways, including not adequately investigating Ticketmaster’s claims and forcing the company to incur financial costs. Lloyd’s eventually agreed to help defend the lawsuits but only said it may be liable for one of the Canadian cases.
Ticketmaster’s attorney David Schack, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm K&L Gates, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Late last year, Live Nation filed a similar law against insurer Illinois Union Insurance Co. for failure to honor a policy claim, this time involving a class action over delivery and other fees the company charges for tickets.
