Key Points
(Reuters) Live Nation and its Ticketmaster unit have been hit with the first in a likely wave of new consumer antitrust lawsuits after the U.S. government and states sued to break up the two companies on Thursday...
The first consumer class-action lawsuit to piggyback on the government cases was filed later on Thursday in Manhattan federal court, seeking $5 billion in damages on behalf of potentially millions of ticket purchasers...
The cases accuse Live Nation of exerting monopoly control over the live events industry, threatening venues that work with rivals and boxing out competitors...
Lawyers who reviewed the government complaint said Live Nation could base its defense partly on the Justice Departments decision to sign off on Live Nations Ticketmaster acquisition more than a decade ago...
However, antitrust legal scholar Rebecca Allensworth of Vanderbilt University said while the publics opinion of Live Nation is legally unimportant, appearances matter in cases, maybe especially when they are decided by juries...
