Ottawa judge throws out Kiss case
A local judge has thrown out a discrimination lawsuit launched by a disgruntled Ottawa concertgoer against Kiss frontman Gene Simmons.
Byeongheon Lee, an Ottawa businessman, alleged that Simmons directed security staff to toss him out of a concert at the Canadian Tire Centre on July 25, 2013, during the band’s Monster World Tour.
Lee claimed that Simmons, the band’s bass guitarist and vocalist, gestured to him during the concert — apparently because he was blocking the view of someone else by standing near the stage. According to Lee, Simmons motioned to security staff who ordered him to leave, and roughly removed him from the arena.
Lee alleged that a security guard told him “that Mr. Simmons did not like his ethnicity.”
In a decision released Wednesday, however, Ontario Superior Court Justice Marc Labrosse dismissed the legal action against Simmons, ruling that the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is the only legal forum that can hear a discrimination claim based on race or ethnicity.
Although there’s some evidence, Labrosse said, to support Lee’s claim based on notes provided by the security company, the Superior Court does not have the jurisdiction to hear such a case.
What’s more, the judge said, Simmons does not bear any legal responsibility for what happened to Lee during his ejection from the concert.
“I fail to see how the action of requesting the removal of the plaintiff (Lee) from a concert, regardless of the reason for the request, would extend liability to Simmons for the manner in which security staff would have proceeded with such removal,” the judge wrote.
Lee alleges he was led into the stadium’s hallway where he was surrounded, harassed and assaulted by security officers, who grabbed him by the arm and escorted him out of the Canadian Tire Centre without being allowed to collect his coat or cellphone.
The incident, Lee said, caused him humiliation, anxiety and traumatic stress.
Lee took his concert complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, but they have declined to pursue an investigation of his claim.
Lee could not be reached for comment, and Simmons’s Ottawa lawyer, Stephen Cavanagh, was unavailable Wednesday.
The Israeli-born Simmons, now 67, became a founding member of Kiss in the early 1970s after an impoverished childhood in New York where he was raised by his single mother, Flora, a Holocaust survivor. He has enhanced his fame as an actor, entrepreneur, philanthropist and reality TV star.
Simmons is also one of the few Hollywood celebrities who has spoken in defence of U.S. President Donald Trump. “He’s good for the political system,” Simmons told Rolling Stone in an interview last year as Trump campaigned for the White House.