It’s official: Fyre Festival was the worst “music festival” ever. Now, Ja Rule and the committee that planned the event is being sued for being fraudulent, not to mention downright terrible.
Just days after the festival was supposed to begin and subsequently fell apart, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Ja Rule, fellow organizer Billy McFarland, and their company, Fyre Media Inc. Geragos & Geragos is a high profile law firm that has represented Michael Jackson and Chris Brown, among others, and is now representing the festival goers filing the suit.
We just filed Federal Class Action against Fyre Media for festival of horror. Refunding ticket price is not enough! @markgeragos pic.twitter.com/5CsNtQ6yjh
— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) May 1, 2017
Mr. Meiselas is definitely right. Refunding the ticket price is not enough when you look at the conditions the people who paid thousands to go had to deal with.
Welcome to the festival, enjoy your USAID disaster relief tents. https://t.co/gRdcg3oKGb pic.twitter.com/BeGYeuvfqe
— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) May 1, 2017
Live from Fyre Festival. https://t.co/gi9dXgQAzE
— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 28, 2017
So TGIF & enjoy your low wage jobs today because at least you didn't pay $5k+ to be at lord of the flies train wreck that is #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/YWtrKaqxL8
— Madeline Krebs (@madelinekrebs) April 28, 2017
Stuck at #fyrefestival trying to leave for the last 8 hours. barley any food or water or security or electricity pic.twitter.com/jHPMnJw5gx
— Lamaan (@LamaanElGallal) April 28, 2017
Obviously, this festival ended up being nothing like what the company had promised time and time again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANYqvbFsodw
As a result, fraud is the focus of the $100 million lawsuit.
Shockingly, Defendants had been aware for months that their festival was dangerously under-equipped and posed a serious danger to anyone in attendance… …the few contractors who had been retained by Defendants were refusing to work because they had not been paid.
At the same time, however, Defendants were knowingly lying about the festival’s accommodations and safety, and continued to promote the event and sell ticket packages. The festival was even promoted as being on a “private island” once owned by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar—the island isn’t private, as there is a “Sandals” resort down the road, and Pablo Escobar never owned the island.
A lot of this has been corroborated in various statements both by the company itself and people who worked for the festival at one point before quitting prior to the concert “beginning”.
Here’s what Chloe Gordon wrote for NY Mag:
“My job as a talent producer was to coordinate travel and on-site logistics with the artists who would be performing: Blink 182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, among others, had already signed on. I would be working with an 11-person team and a few of the festival executives… But nothing had been done. Festival vendors weren’t in place, no stage had been rented, transportation had not been arranged. Frankly, we were standing on an empty gravel pit and no one had any idea how we were going to build a festival village from scratch.”
“I cannot explain how or why the bros running this festival ignored every warning sign they were given along the way. The writing was on the wall. I saw it firsthand six weeks ago. They overlooked so many very basic things. And baby, they forgot to make me sign an NDA.”
That’s rough. Also, no NDA? That just opens them up to a potential firestorm of bad news.
Forgetting about NDAs and public statements by the festival, videos like this won’t help Fyre Festival in the lawsuit either.
We have been locked indoors with no air NO FOOD and NO water #fyrefestival #fyrefest fyrefraud pic.twitter.com/wg5pZmSvnx
— Lamaan (@LamaanElGallal) April 28, 2017
What may help Fyre Festival in their case is that some of the concert goers went pubic saying regardless of how bad the 2017 edition was, they would be interested in attending an actual Fyre Festival in 2018.
Yes, seriously.
"The festival wasn't ready yet…there was absolutely no food" #FyreFestival attendee describes the chaotic scene: https://t.co/6QPhBkMlSJ pic.twitter.com/MOGmscY5Yv
— Good Morning America (@GMA) May 1, 2017
Then again, Mr. Attendee might not have known about the lawsuit before appearing on GMA. This whole story gets funnier every single day.