Judge Rejects Live Nation Venue-Transfer Motion As High-Stakes DOJ Antitrust Lawsuit Heats Up

Downtown Washington, D.C. Photo Credit: Carol M. Highsmith

A federal judge has rejected a venue-transfer push from Live Nation in the antitrust lawsuit filed against it by the DOJ and a number of states.District Judge Arun Subramanian recently ruled against the Ticketmaster parent’s transfer motion, which was specifically looking to shift the high-stakes case from New York to Washington, D.C. We previously covered the sought venue change – and the Justice Department’s opposition – in detail.

Just to recap, though, Live Nation argued in many more words that the legal battle should play out in D.C. owing to a jurisdiction-retention provision in the 2010 consent decree that gave it the green light to merge with Ticketmaster. That’s largely due to the litigation’s attempt to unwind the Live Nation-Ticketmaster union, which is at the core of the decree, according to the defendants.

But Judge Subramanian doesn’t feel the same way, spelling out in the relevant opinion and order that the “case doesn’t fall within the scope of that [consent-decree] provision, and defendants can’t otherwise carry their burden to show that transfer would foster convenience or the interests of justice.”

The alleged violations in the antitrust action, the judge proceeded, concern “the Sherman Act and various state laws, not the consent decree.” Moreover, the plaintiffs “aren’t trying to vindicate the decree’s requirements; they say that defendants have violated separate legal duties,” per the text.“True, the practical effect of the decree was to remove an immediate barrier to defendants’ merger,” continued Judge Subramanian. “But nothing in the decree insulated the merged entity from future antitrust challenges, including this case. … This case doesn’t run up against the decree because the decree doesn’t reach beyond the specific pre-merger challenge that it helped resolve.”

And with that clear-cut answer to the transfer question, the suit (which Live Nation is confident it’ll beat) is chugging right along. A different order from the judge has given the parties until Friday, October 11th to jointly propose “dates for another conference in late October.”

While it perhaps goes without saying, the multifaceted case is proving involved on several levels. The City of Orlando was apparently subpoenaed in September to provide venue- and agreement-related documents from across a decade, for instance.

Earlier this month, ahead of a deadline to send along the materials later in October, the city moved to receive reimbursement for fees because the associated tasks “will undoubtedly require significant labor by both attorneys and staff.”