In an uncommon ruling that quoted from Taylor Swift’s “All Too Effectively,” a California appeals courtroom has rejected Metallica’s lawsuit demanding that its insurance coverage firm pay for greater than $3 million in losses stemming from concert events that had been canceled as a result of COVID-19 pandemic.
The choice, issued Monday (March 18) by California’s Courtroom of Enchantment, mentioned that six COVID-cancelled 2020 exhibits in South America weren’t lined by Metallica’s insurance coverage coverage with Lloyd’s of London, due to a transparent exclusion within the contract for any losses stemming from “communicable illnesses.”
The legendary rock band had argued the case ought to have gone to trial, since a jury may have determined that non-COVID causes led to the cancellations. However Justice Maria Stratton, improbably citing Swift, mentioned it was “absurd to assume that authorities closures weren’t the results of Covid-19.”
“To paraphrase Taylor Swift: ‘We had been there. We bear in mind all of it too nicely,’” the justice wrote. “There was no vaccine towards Covid-19 in March 2020 and no medicine to deal with it. Ventilators had been briefly provide. N-95 masks had been all however non-existent. Sufferers had been being handled in tents in hospital parking heaps. The mortality price of Covid-19 was unknown, however to present only one instance of the potential fatality price, by late March, 2020, New York Metropolis was utilizing refrigerated vans as short-term morgues. Folks had been terrified.”
Metallica’s case is certainly one of many which were filed by musicians, venues, bars and different companies looking for insurance coverage protection for hurt brought on by the outbreak of COVID-19, which led to months of extreme journey restrictions, pressured closures and bans on massive gatherings.
However like Metallica’s case, nearly all of these lawsuits have up to now been received by insurers. Many insurance policies included categorical carveouts for issues brought on by illnesses, just like the one within the band’s contract; different insurance policies, like many for brick-and-mortar companies, typically required “bodily injury” that’s tough to indicate with a pandemic shutdown.
The most important such case within the music business is a sweeping lawsuit filed by Reside Nation, looking for protection from Manufacturing unit Mutual Insurance coverage Co. for greater than 10,000 exhibits (encompassing a whopping 15 million tickets) that had been canceled or postponed in the course of the pandemic. After a decide refused to dismiss Reside Nation’s allegations in 2022, the case stays pending.
Metallica sued Lloyd’s of London in June 2021 after the insurer refused to cowl their losses stemming from the South American tour, which had been set to kick off on April 15, 2020, however was postponed when the governments of Argentina, Chile and Brazil imposed strict restrictions amid the worsening pandemic.
Courtroom paperwork present that in Could 2020, the band submitted a lack of $3,234,569 stemming from the cancelled exhibits, protecting issues like $184,996 in payroll for retained crew members. However citing the illness exclusion, the insurer rapidly denied the declare: “Sadly we have now to advise that no protection is afforded for this matter beneath this Coverage,” the corporate wrote in a June 2020 response letter.
In December 2022, a Los Angeles decide rejected Metallica’s case and the varied arguments for why Lloyds ought to have paid for the concert events — together with ruling that the cancellations had been brought on by journey restrictions that had been “a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic.”
Interesting that call, Metallica argued {that a} jury may need discovered a distinct trigger for the live performance cancellations. The band’s attorneys pointed to the truth that venues later reopened and the exhibits had been carried out in 2022, “regardless of the continuing presence of COVID.”
However in her ruling Monday, Justice Stratton mentioned that argument missed the mark. With the arrival of vaccines and extra info, “a lot had modified” by the spring of 2022.
“Folks had been ready to make a extra correct cost-benefit evaluation of restrictions versus potential sickness,” the justice wrote. “The truth that governments selected to raise restrictions at that time, two years after COVID-19 was first found, doesn’t in any means name into query their causes for imposing journey restrictions early within the pandemic.”
The decide additionally rejected numerous different arguments from Metallica, just like the declare that the coverage didn’t cowl COVID cancellations as a result of it didn’t particularly use the time period “virus”: “The insurance coverage coverage definition of communicable illness doesn’t discuss with any pathogens nor does it restrict the exclusion to solely these communicable illnesses brought on by particular pathogens.”
Attorneys for each side didn’t instantly return requests for remark.
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