Within hours of eight people dying and scores of others being injured at the Astroworld Festival Friday night, the website of Houston lawyer Chad Pinkerton was blowing up. He was getting calls and emails from victims and their families.
Pinkerton is one of a dozen prominent lawyers – including Richard Mithoff, C.J. Baker and Rusty Hardin, to name a few – likely to file lawsuits this week seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages against Live Nation, rapper Travis Scott and a plethora of other potential defendants connected to the tragedy that took place outside of NRG Stadium.
In an interview Monday, Pinkerton said he is already representing a dozen people who suffered injuries at the Friday night event. The first two lawsuits were filed over the weekend by Houston law firms Kherkher Garcia and Arnold & Itkin. Each suit seeks $1 million or more in damages.
But unlike many other lawyers, Pinkerton has been in court before against Live Nation and he knows the concert producer’s modus operandi. He’s also helped clients win nine-digit payoffs – a sizable chunk of which was paid by the California concert promoter.
“Live Nation is a company that wants to create a chaotic environment that facilitates Mr. Scott’s out-of-control image that he wants to promote,” Pinkerton told The Texas Lawbook in an interview Sunday. “The chaos and tragedy that happened at the Astroworld Festival did not just happen accidentally.”
“Mr. Scott will have no legal protections for his words and actions onstage Friday night,” he said. “Live Nation and Mr. Scott are equally responsible for the chaos at the festival because it was something they both wanted.”
Lawyers suing Live Nation and Scott will face significant legal hurdles – including clauses quietly attached to the purchase of concert tickets designed to protect Live Nation from large damage awards – just to get the case to court and to trial, he said.
Pinkerton, who is 49, said those who purchased tickets from Live Nation unknowingly agreed to waive their rights to trial by jury and have any disputes decided by arbitration. In addition, Live Nation lawyers attached a clause to the ticket purchase that purports to “limit the amount of money a ticketholder may recover to the purchase price of the ticket.”
“We lawyers will fight these clauses and I am confident we can overcome these obstacles as we have done in the past cases against Live Nation,” Pinkerton said.
At the end of the day, Pinkerton may not be the lead lawyer in the highly complex litigation that is to come, but his experience certainly earns him a seat at the table.
The University of Houston Law Center graduate was one of the lead lawyers representing hundreds of victims of the 2017 mass shooting that killed 60 people and injured nearly 500 others at the music festival produced and promoted by Live Nation at the MGM Resort’s Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.
Pinkerton’s clients, which included the families of four of those shot and killed during the massacre and 59 others who were injured by the gunfire, helped negotiate the $800 million settlement agreement paid by MGM, Live Nation and other defendants in 2019.
“Live Nation is a company that helps put on these events and it is their responsibility to put on a show that is safe, and Live Nation failed to do that Friday night,” he said.
Multiple efforts to obtain a comment from Live Nation officials and Travis Scott were unsuccessful. In a statement Saturday on Instagram, Scott wrote that his prayers are with the victims and that he will cooperate fully with a Houston police investigation.
Pinkerton said lawsuits, which will be filed as soon as Monday, will target festival producer and promoter Live Nation, performer Scott, the owners and operators of the property surrounding the NRG Stadium, the private security firm and other festival vendors.
“We are examining all of the permits that were granted related to the festival to see if others have responsibility,” he said.
Live Nation and Scott, however, will clearly be the primary targets.
“The waiver clauses or releases agreed to by ticket purchases will not protect Live Nation or Travis Scott from charges of negligence or gross negligence,” Pinkerton said.
The binding mandatory arbitration clauses that people knowingly or unknowingly agreed to when they purchased their tickets will be a formidable barrier to overcome, he said.
“We will have to develop a legal strategy to attack the enforceability of the arbitration clauses,” he said. “For example, those who purchased their tickets secondhand did not agree to have their disputes decided through arbitration instead of going to court.”
Pinkerton was born in Denton and raised in Dallas, but his law firm bio states that he spent a lot of time on his grandfather’s farm 70 miles south of Amarillo. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas Tech. He graduated summa cum laudefrom the University of Houston Law Center.
While he did summer clerkships at Fulbright & Jaworski, Thompson & Knight and Gardere – three large corporate law firms – Pinkerton decided he wanted to do plaintiff’s litigation and went to work for Tony Buzbee. In 2006, he started his own practice in Houston.
Pinkerton’s website states that he has a “gunslinger’s mentality” and that he “is a risk taker.”